The Art of Drawing Dragons, Mythological Beasts, and Fantasy Creatures: Step-by-step techniques for drawing fantastic creatures of folklore and legend (Collector's)

by Michael Dobrzycki

Packed with step-by-step projects and helpful drawing tips and techniques, The Art of Drawing Dragons, Mythological Beasts, and Fantasy Creatures explores how to create realistic drawings of dragons, fairies, unicorns, goblins, and more.

Ever considered the differences between fairies and pixies or struggled to remember how many heads belong to a hydra? With more than 50 step-by-step projects; tips and techniques for working with graphite pencil, charcoal, and ink; as well as a little history for each featured mythological and fantasy creature, The Art of Drawing Dragons, Mythological Beasts, and Fantasy Creatures includes everything you need to know to get started drawing your own impressive beasts.

From choosing the right tools and materials to helpful drawing techniques, such as understanding value, basic shading techniques, creating textures, and constructing your own creatures, this step-by-step drawing guide is the perfect first step for beginning artists. Follow along as you learn to draw dragons and fantasy creatures from around the world, including elemental dragons, sea serpents, hydras, fairies, trolls, goblins, gargoyles, and more!  With practice, you’ll soon be able to capture your favorite fantasy creatures—and learn a little bit about their origin and history at the same time.

The Collector's Series offers approachable, step-by-step art instruction for a variety of mediums and subjects, such as drawing, oil, acrylic, watercolor, cartooning, calligraphy, and more. Perfect for beginning artists, each title features artist tips for drawing or painting anything and everything from people, animals, and still life to flowers, trees, and landscapes.

• ISBN13: 9781600588709
• Publish Date: 3 November 2020
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Walter Foster Publishing
• Edition: Revised Edition
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 144
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Art of Drawing Dragons, Mythological Beasts, and Fantasy Creatures is a new volume in the Art of Drawing series - this volume by Michael Dobrzycki. Originally published in 2007, this reformat and re-release 3rd Nov 2020 by Quarry on their Walter Foster imprint, is 144 pages and available in paperback format.

This volume has a similar format to the other familiar (and beloved) volumes in the series. The introduction covers tools, materials, some texture techniques, and some general drawing info (very basic). The following chapters contain the tutorials, arranged thematically: types of dragon, dragons from different cultures worldwide, mythological beasts, and fantasy creatures. Each of the tutorials contains step by step line drawing from basic outline to finished drawing. I felt some of the steps hopped over a lot of intermediate refinement, but all-in-all they're followable and clearly illustrated. The tutorials are chosen from a wide variety of world mythologies and include both universally known and lesser known creatures.

I could see this booklet, bundled with a drawing set, being a superlative gift for a young artist up to adult age. The drawings are detailed enough to look quite professional, but not so extremely advanced that they would frustrate a keen beginner.

Five stars. I love that there are fantasy tutorial books available from this classic art-publishing imprint. The world would be boring indeed if the only drawing books were on portraiture, horses, dogs, and florals.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes