Cultivating creativity, teaching new skills & enabling imagination
Expanding your child's creative potential.
Class Artz Academy home artz

Chinese Dragon

This fun and easy Chinese dragon is so versatile and can be adapted to pretty much any medium. The scope here is limitless. All you need is to add imagination.

Introduction

This fun and easy Chinese dragon is so versatile and can be adapted to pretty much any medium. Check your art cupboard. If you have all the materials in the list below, that’s great, but if you don’t there are many ways to modify it. I wanted to do something in coloured pencil. I had some spare black paper and had some wool left over from another craft project, so I experimented and came up with this. 

You will see in the steps below that I have demonstrated this using marker on white paper. That was to make it easier to view the drawing steps. If you choose to do it on plain paper and use coloured pencils, the colour will certainly pop. Alternative options include using oil pastels, chalk pastels, gel pens (they would look great), plain or metallic markers and even fluro paints. The scope here is limitless. All you need is to add imagination.

Materials

  • Coloured A4 paper (I opted for black paper, white is used to demonstrate)
  • Coloured pencils
  • Lead pencil, rubber
  • Piece of wool
  • PVA craft glue

Step 1

Class Artz Academy home artz

Lightly trace a free-hand ‘S’ shape on your preferred paper. Use your PVA glue and go over that line, then apply the piece of wool and allow it to dry.

Step 2

Class Artz Academy home artz
Create long lines on both sides of the wool. Add a triangular head and tail.

Step 3

Class Artz Academy home artz
Join the lines to create the body shape.

Step 4

Class Artz Academy home artz
Flesh it out with some patterning. I used curved lines both on top and beneath. Continue with patterning on the inside to create interest and detail.

Step 5

Class Artz Academy home artz
Complete the detail in the dragon’s face and background including 6 point stars. Add colour and be surprised with what you can create so simply!

Step 6

Class Artz Academy home artz
Here is the final result on black paper!