Welcome! This post explores how to easily shade dragon eyes realistically! This valuable and engaging drawing lesson increases your students’ value shading skills and deepens their understanding of how to apply Value Shading to achieve Form and Texture.
Have you noticed that it seems like almost all young artists love dragons?! Who wouldn’t love to know how to draw and shade amazing dragons!
My 8th-grade students all experienced success by following these steps. They were very pleased with their final giant 18×24 dragon drawings! Let’s get started!
Supplies:
- markers
- pencil and eraser
- assorted colored pencils
- fine point and ultra-fine point black markers
- gel pens
- white acrylic paint and round 000 detail brush (optional)
- white 9 x12 drawing paper, cut in half to create a 4 x 6 piece of paper
TIP: Prior to this lesson, requiring students to create a practice value strip (Values 1-5) is helpful.
STEP ONE:
- Use a pencil to draw one large dragon eye to fill most of the 4″ x 6″ paper.
- Outline the eye neatly with black markers.
- Leave a white catchlight that crosses the black pupil.
- Erase all pencil lines
STEP TWO:
- Select a bright-colored green marker to neatly color the skin surrounding the eye.
- Select a dark green colored pencil to shade around the bright green marker areas.
- Press very hard near the black outline and lighten the values in the center.
- Blend in the edge of the black outline even more by value shading heavily with a black colored pencil.
- Lift out with an eraser if needed, to keep the center of the shape lightest to create the illusion of a rounded form.
STEP THREE:
- Shade the top of the eye with a black colored pencil pressing.
- Apply a lot of pressure and gradually fade the black into the white of the eye with lighter pressure
- Shade the bottom edge of the eye in a similar manner. The illusion of a sphere in an eye socket should start to emerge.
STEP FOUR:
- Shade with a mid-tone (value 3) a little lower onto the upper third of the eye.
- This creates the illusion that the eye ridge is casting a shadow across the upper eye.
- Be careful to reserve a lot of white area in the majority of the remaining eye shape for color in the next step.
STEP FIVE:
- Choose 2 colored pencils for your eye color. Select a dark and light value. For example, the drawing below has orange and dark brown.
- Use the darker value to shade the area under the lid. Apply a lot of pressure, especially in the dark shadowed areas.
- Apply the lighter value on top of the darker values and also slightly around the pupil as shown.
When you press hard, the color pigments will blend and smear together to almost look like paint! This colored pencil blending technique s referred to as burnishing or polishing.
STEP SIX:
- Apply a lighter/brighter colored pencil to the entire eye area. This example shows a bright yellow.
- Pressing as hard as you can over everything!
- This intense application of color will further polish and blend the colored pencil pigments together and combine all the colors to unify the entire eye.
- Darken shadows more if desired, with your black colored pencil.
STEP SEVEN:
- Select 1-3 marker colors that coordinate with your base eye colors. Draw in a starburst with multi-colored or just one-color lines around the pupils.
- An orange marker was used over yellow in the first example below.
3 HELPFUL TIPS:
- If your color values come out too dark by the pupils, it is easy to fix by using an eraser to scrub and “lift out” some pigment around the pupils!
- Go back in with colored pencils, neon gel pens, or bright markers and make corrections until you are satisfied with your results.
- A white gel pen even can be used to remove/cover over marker colors you don’t want!
STEP EIGHT
- Use a white gel pen to draw in reflective highlights over areas of the pupil and eye.
- Acrylic white paint also could be used for this highlighting effect. Apply paint with a small, round 000 detail brush.
- Notice how the highlights overlap the pupil and curve to follow the rounded contour of the spherical eyeball.
TIP: When creating the glassy effect, notice how only one catchlight isn’t as effective as 3 or more catchlights.
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Grab this student-favorite Dragon Drawing Art Lesson HERE!
This Middle School Art or High School Art Dragon lesson will really get your students enchanted with drawing and shading dragon eyes!
- This colored pencil and marker drawing was a huge hit with my 8th graders!
- The students were proud, and a bit surprised, by the professional results they ALL were able to easily achieve!
- The final dragon drawings created an enchanting large-scale display in the cafeteria!
- The students enjoyed many compliments and praise for the beautiful artwork they created!
Thanks for visiting his blog post to learn how to shade dragon eyes! I would love to see your creations!
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Susanne Reisterer-Creator of SparkleGal’s Art Magic
P.S. If you enjoy Medieval art subject matter take a look at this 2-point Perspective Castle Drawing Lesson or check out this post!
