
- Sketching/Drawing
- Level: Intermediate
- Subject: Dragon Wings
Dragon Workshop: Head | Body | Scales | Wings | Limbs And Talons | Horns And Other Addons | More…
I briefly touched upon drawing wings earlier when explaining how to design dragon body. Let us take a closer look at how we can draw the wings in just about any position.
Anatomic Construction Lines
Here is a construction of an open wing from the inner side.

The joints are denoted by letters and the major bones indicated by numbers. ‘A’ denotes the shoulder joint, ‘B’ denotes the elbow joint, and ‘C’ denotes the wrist joint. This is drawn comparing the open wing to a stretched human arm.

Above is the construction of a closed or curled up wing. Note that line marked with ’1′ is from shoulder to elbow, ’2′ is the fore arm, and ’3′ is the index finger.
Wrapping The Skin

All that is left to do is wrapping skin around these skeletal construction lines.

Sketch the skin of the wings, stretching between the fingers, from index to middle, to ring, to little finger. After that, just pull the webbing like skin to the pit under the ‘arm’.
Various Wing Positions

Study your own arm and examine how it bends or ask your friend to pose for you, so that you can do quick construction line sketches.

After that, practice wrap the skin around it. Let is sag a bit between the ‘fingers’. Once you clean up, you should have a lineart that looks appropriate on a dragon body. If you are doing any closeup artwork of a dragon, consider drawing scales on them – but it is usually on the outer or the back side of the wing.
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Tags: Intermediate, Tutorial
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Thank you so much for this dragon tutorial, I have my own method, but viewing this helped me alot! Thanks so much!
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Hi, this is an extremely well-done tutorial, however the wing anatomy is incorrect. The “elbow” would be bending the other way, allowing a neat fold onto the back, not unlike the human arm.
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The wing structure section of this tutorial was very helpful for perfecting my dragons, but after studying a bit of wing anatomy, I noticed, isn’t the elbow backward or hyperextended?
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@ Nick!
There is no one set body structure for dragons, they can be whatever you want them to be.
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cool!!!
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Absolutely amazing. This really got me on the road to a hobby in drawing dragons and other mythical beasts. Thank you for this tutorial.
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i like drawing dragons, but i cant get heads, the wings you draw are not quite like my wings, mine are more defined. yours is good though
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Wow, this really does help me out a lot… I was thinking about how to add this to my fursona character… and now thanks to this, I can! So thank you!
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