HELLO FOLKS!!

Since I was a child I've always liked fantasy. Creatures, Heroes, Cosmic Entities, Gods, Titans and Dragons!

I have always liked to draw those things, but I never dared to draw a Dragon, I found it very difficult to try to simulate dragon's skin, the times I tried was a failure.
Lately I have done a lot of drawing with charcoal, and I said to myself, Why not?

Drawing with charcoal seems to me the most incredible experience I've ever lived, I love drawing so much that when I tried this I did not want to let it go, I'm officially married to charcoal. Now that I can make a dragon thanks to the effects of this, I will not let it go anymore!

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THE BLACK DRAGON

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Dragons are magical creatures, we see these characters in many stories, we know they can fly, they are huge, they spit fire from their mouth, they are powerful but they are nothing more than a Myth.

In my fantastic mind they will always exist and with my illustration I have given life to a powerful Black Dragon.

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DRAWING A BLACK DRAGON

As I said, in this illustration I only wanted to use charcoal to give life to this Dragon.
Some other materials are needed for the charcoal to make its magic:

• Charcoal Pencil.
• Moldable Eraser.
• Brush.
• Diffuser.
• A4 Opaline 220 G.
  

That's right, only this, the rest comes only from the imagination. Time, creativity and a lot of desire, so, let's go!

Having already the image sketched, I start illustrating his mouth, it is a dark dragon, normally in drawing with graphite pencils, we work with layers until we reach the right tone, here I do it from the darkest and from there I look for other tones.
The charcoal pencil does not do all the work, his best friends are the diffuser and the brush, these give the effects of degradation, blur and volume, you just have to have patience and perseverance to achieve the right effect. You can always erase and repeat until you get what you want.

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The textures are a little complicated, it is not the same to blur, degrade and give volume, this is something a little more tedious. For the texture of the tongue use the moldable eraser a lot.

Draw some points on the tongue and teeth and soften with the brush so that they do not look so dark, the eraser's job is to create light so that at the edge of each of the points erase slightly. This gives a highlight, by erasing a little right next to each area where the black is more focused will create a sense of relief, although we abuse a lot of this the drawing will look like a rubber, also make some dots of light with the eraser It gives an effect of something corrugated.

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Fangs dirty them with small black dots and shadows, an old technique called pointillism helped me to give them texture, make their depth and volume only using pointillism and degrade the area with the brush, gives an amazing effect.

The texture of the skin, I thought that here would be my nightmare but no! It was the part that I enjoyed the most.
The charcoal is very black and take advantage of this to make the small depths of the skin, those striae, to call them in some way. When you blur these small marks, a gray trail is created on the edge of the black, which when passing the eraser on the edge gives the right effect to make the dragon skin, a few more dots of eraser and it is just what I wanted!

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I continued using the same technique throughout the dragon's body.
On the horns also use some pointillism, along with some small cracks. The rest of the drawing was to repeat, blur and degrade, give volume with the eraser and so on in each zone.

In the images we see the progress of the drawing using these techniques:

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After many hours of illustration this is the Final Art

Finished the work digitize the image for a better appreciation of the details.

When drawing wonderful things could be created, I never thought I could do one of my favorite creatures in a traditional way, I am very happy for this work.

I hope you liked it as much as I did, and all those artists who are constantly drawing to improve, I wish you to keep going, continue that there are no impossible!
Here I have given life to a legendary creature and if that is very scary! Actually if they exist!
Thank you!

Until the next time!