How to Draw a Dragon
The dragon is the most recognizable symbol in all of fantasy art. It has captivated the minds of artists, authors, and storytellers for millennia because it is known for being strong, ancient, and majestic. However, many of us may be unaware of this magnificent creature’s origins. As a result, I’ve written this brief history to show the evolution of this mythological creature that has captivated our imaginations for so long. The dragon is the most recognizable symbol in all of fantasy art.
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It has captivated the minds of artists, authors, and storytellers for millennia because it is known for being strong, ancient, and majestic. However, many of us may be unaware of this magnificent creature’s origins. As a result, I’ve written this brief history to show the evolution of this mythological creature that has captivated our imaginations for so long. The legend of dragons dates back to the dawn of mankind, but where did this story originated from? The origins of the concept of dragons (and all legendary beasts) are fairly clear. With the discovery of precious metal mining and stone quarrying for construction, these ancients are likely to have found the fossilized bones of dinosaurs and extinct creatures in the same way as we do. The creation myth in ancient Mesopotamia (circa 5000 B.C.) revolves around a dragon called Tiamat. Marduk slays the great beast of heaven and casts it into the sea, thereby creating the earth.
Dragons continue to appear in classical mythologies from ancient Greece and Rome, but their appearance varies. In one of his twelve labours, Hercules slays a dragon, Jason subdues the dragon protecting the Golden Fleece, and Apollo slays a great serpent called Python. Both of these creatures are classified as dragons, but their portrayal in art is far from uniform. The dragon is just a giant lizard in general. Dragons : The way we draw our perceptions about this mythical creature. The dragon in western culture does not begin to take on the familiar shape we know today in bestiaries and myths until the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christendom.
Perhaps the tale of Adam and Eve in the Old Testament, as well as Satan’s presence as a serpent, is what first captures the mediaeval imagination. For over a thousand years, the dragon has been associated with evil and demons.
The dragon is also emblazoned on the arms and standards of mediaeval knights to strike fear into the hearts of their foes. Dragons appear in epics and love tales from this time period to be vanquished by good heroes from mythology, legend, and religion. Beowulf, a great Scandinavian king, slays a gigantic fire-breathing dragon and dies in its jaws in the epic Beowulf (ca. 1000 AD.). The dwarf prince Fafnir is transformed into a dragon in the Volsungasaga (circa 1250 AD.) and must be slain by Siegfried.
The Mabinogion (ca. 1400 AD.) is a Welsh epic that portrays the great Red Dragon of Wales fighting a White Dragon and triggering earthquakes. In Christian tradition, Satan appears as a serpent to tempt the saints. The Golden Legend (circa 1200 AD) depicts St. George and St. Margaret, as well as a number of other saints, facing dragons. The archetypal fire-breathing dragon is in complete splendor by 1500 AD, thanks to the mystical pinnacle of Catholicism coupled with the ever-increasing craft of visual artists. This is well known in Edmund Spencer’s The Fairie Queen, where he describes his titanic beast. (1590 C.E.)
The dragon becomes more of a creature of entertainment than of moral belief after the Protestant Reformation and the arrival of the Age of Reason. Protestant artists are forbidden from portraying biblical scenes, and saints’ tales are shunned as idolatry. Learning to draw dragons is amazing. Dragons and other beasts are used as decorative elements and objects of classical illustration. It is during this period that the dragon is portrayed as a fantasy creature for the first time. Via Bullfinch, The Brother’s Grim, and new translations of the classics and myths, the dragon resurfaces in the nineteenth century, as archaeologists, historians, and tales from the “Pre Raphaelite” period are researched and adopted as suitable subject matter.
The dark past’s dragon stories provide fodder for artists and authors alike during this time period. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the neo-isms of the beaux-arts academic style (Neoclassical, neo-gothic, neo[1]Egyptian, neo-Romanesque) had returned to using the dragon as a decorative embellishment. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, science and technology supplant romantic notions of the arts, relegating dragon tales to the domain of folklore and children’s stories. Painting and literature had embraced realism and analytical minimalism, casting aside all previous superstitions in order to create a new kind of art. During this time, any depictions of dragons (and there aren’t many) become an external manifestation of the artist’s inner psyche. The Id and the Ego have taken the place of the dragon in psychology. However, by the 1970s, the art world was able to accept spirituality, mythology, and the dragon once more. J.R.R. Tolkien and Joseph Campbell’s writings were discovered by Post-Modern artists. The mythologies from which they drew had a comeback.
TSR introduced Dungeons and Dragons to a world hungry for fantasy and monsters in 1976, and it quickly became a worldwide phenomenon. Dragon riders of Pern (1970) and Dragon slayer (1981) by McCaffery were both presented to a rapt audience. Since then, the dragon has resurfaced in a way that hasn’t been seen since the Middle Ages. The dragon has been adopted as the go-to monster in everything from Harry Potter to World of Warcraft and Skyrim to inspire awe and magic. Many cultures share many concepts, but one in particular is shared by almost all cultures and is almost as fascinating as the concept of God: the dragon. Legends and myths about dragons with identical characteristics can be found all over the world. Of course, each culture has its own version, with differences in details: some cultures say myths about a giant serpent, while others describe a fire-breathing beast, and still others worship a wise, god-like creature, but they all seem to agree on certain fundamentals.
There are several theories as to where the concept of dragons came from. The third one concerns our ancient fear of snakes. “Dragon-like figures adorned stone ornaments of Europe’s Paleolithic era and were carved on mammoth teeth in Siberia, ” writes Edward O. Wilson in his book In Search of Nature (1996). The dragon isn’t your typical reptile. It’s a miraculous creature, wise and cruel, horrifying and stunning, interesting, spectacular, and frightening all at the same time. The many-headed monster Hydra from Greek mythology, which can re-grow its heads until its neck is burned, is similar to the Slavic Zmiy, which, like many European dragons, could breathe fire. Satan is depicted in the Bible as a colossal fiery dragon with seven heads and ten horns. Asian dragons have four legs and a long snake-like body; they don’t have wings, but they can fly.
The Basilisk, on the other hand, is a colorful serpent-like creature from Polish fairytales that, like Medusa in Greek mythology, is capable of turning people into stone with a single look. Legends from the Urals tell us about the Mistress of the Copper Mountain ( Hoziayka Mednoy Gory), a mysterious woman who rules the Earth’s riches and can transform into a giant lizard. A dragon guards a treasure in a cave in German folklore, while Shahmeran, the queen of snakes, is a myth of Turks and Persians. What then are the roots of the dragon legend? Why did we conjure them up in our heads and scatter them across the globe? It’s difficult to believe in dragons nowadays. There are fossil bones displayed in museums all over the country, but there isn’t a single dragon bone among them. May it be that the concept of the dragon originated from the discovery of dinosaur bones by prehistoric societies? Imagine the tribe discovering a fossilized dinosaur in all its glory, completed with colossal teeth and paws.
Wouldn’t seeing the bones of such a creature be shocking? It’s likely that early humans discovered dinosaur skeletons. Dragon characteristics such as fiery breath or numerous heads, on the other hand, are yet to be directly seen in any dinosaur fossil found. Even in cultures that are geographically separated from one another, these characteristics assigned to dragons are normal. Another theory has a better chance of being true: for any civilization to have these shared myths and legends with identical characteristics, there must have been a general observation of a catastrophic event a long time ago.
What sort of disaster may have been visible all over the world and resembled a dragon? Two types of celestial events seem to be contenders. Perhaps a particularly bright comet passed close to Earth early in human history, with a long glowing tail that unfurled for weeks on end across the night sky, visible from every continent? Comets were historically known as omens of death, synonymous with warnings of cataclysms and plagues, according to mediaeval accounts. They instilled terror and distrust in the minds of the public. An real strike on the Earth by a giant asteroid, on the other hand, may have been seen as a bright light streaking through the sky, accompanied by a massive eruption that demolished trees for miles, throwing huge quantities of dust into the atmosphere, and thus perhaps altered the path of the seasons for a while. Dragon attacks are mentioned in several different legends (especially Slavic and European ones). Fire-breathing dragons, according to legend, slaughtered infants, humans, and the aged, consumed domestic animals, and set fire to fields, gardens, and woods. Owing to the failure to fish, failed harvests and a shortage of nutrition may have resulted in extreme hunger and poverty. As a result, a large number of people would have died, including children, women, and the elderly.
Many who were fortunate enough to survive must have warned their children and grandchildren of the horrors of the assault by the “dragon.” This comet/meteorite theory, too, has flaws. For e.g., while it describes a connection between dragons and disasters, it doesn’t go into detail about the Medusa’s lethal gaze, the Basilisk’s inability to fly, or the wisdom and grace of Chinese dragons. We feel great, unexplained terror as we stare into the freezing eyes of a snake. Is this a natural fear of snakes, or have we been trained to fear them? Experiments reveal that even when they see an entity that resembles a snake, baby chimps born in captivity (like their parents) who have never seen a snake in their lives, show alarm and make warning signals. Chimps are very likely to see a snake in their natural habitat, so their response is instinctive. In the one hand, it seems that certain anxiety must be taught in people, since young children are not afraid of snakes and only learn to avoid them after they reach a certain age. “Once they pass the age of five, ” Wilson says, “human beings have an instinctive inclination to master this anxiety quickly and easily.” The response we have to a snake’s abrupt movement, on the other hand, is an instinctive reflex that we can’t regulate. “The maxim imprinted onto the mind is as follows: be vigilant if you see an entity that resembles a snake, ” Wilson says.
Memorize this reaction in order to remain alive.” And in our sleep, we can see the danger a snake poses and the visions it conjures up. Wilson explains a dragon hazard in a dream: “The area in front of me is mysterious, at the edge of unknown, both serene and scary… Suddenly the dragon appears. Not an ordinary well-known reptile; something much more, a threatening creature with incredible powers. Its size and shape varies… its poisonous head spreads alien intelligence… somehow it is both the soul of that shadowed place and the guardian of a much deeper path… life[1]promising and life-taking, seductive and deceiving… sensing this transformation triggers ancient, nameless feelings. It also makes us feel a vague risk, like the risk of a razor blade or of a high cliff.” The myth of the dragon, according to this ‘snake’ theory, is a representation of our instinctual relationship with nature, especially reptilian nature.
Why do we have such a fear of snakes in particular? Snakes were important in the evolution of primates because they were relentless predators. Chimpanzees and monkeys scream in terror as they come face to face with a snake, but lemurs, on the other hand, have no such fear, perhaps because there are no poisonous snakes in Madagascar. Since our forefathers come from Africa, it’s only normal that we dislike snakes and fantasies about dragons. The ‘dinosaur’ and ‘comet’ theories, while promising they may be in certain ways, are unable to justify the dragon’s enduring strength or some of its unique characteristics on their own. The snake theory may be useful here.
The human brain hasn’t adapted solely to respond to snake attacks. It also has the ability to imagine. We not only obtain and relay ideas, but we also elaborate them and even mix them with other ideas to create combinations, thanks to our imaginations. Is it possible to call the dragon a meme? Snakes and an innovative elaboration of our instinctive fears, incorporating suggestions from comets and dinosaurs, may have spawned such a dragon meme.This meme evolved in a variety of forms since it first appeared as a replicator. Its like the God meme, may not have been able to reproduce itself indefinitely, but it has found a way to spread through poetry, fiction, and education. We may also speculate that it resurrected after the first dinosaur skeleton was found.
The dragon meme may have then ‘died’ once more, but a comet discovery reawakened it in the hearts and minds of people all over the world. Thus, a long time ago, the terror of snakes infiltrated our forefathers’ subconscious minds, and now the dragon has taken root in our minds. The God meme has a lot of psychological attraction, but is the same true for the dragon? Indeed, the old, primal terror and awe it evokes is part of its psychological appeal. The dragon fascinates us and conquers our minds the more complex the emotions are. Our forefathers’ fear of snakes has evolved into a fear of dragons. A true reptile transforms into a fantastical creature.
It doesn’t seem to be possible. Humans were once hunter gatherers who coexisted with nature in a delicate equilibrium. They had to pay attention to even the tiniest things about them in order to thrive. Snakes and the terror they instilled in our forefathers did not make life easier for them, but it did increase their odds of survival. Despite the fact that our world has evolved radically, the dragon story seems to be timeless. Regardless of how much we prefer an artificial world over forest and desert, and how much we hide behind concrete walls, the dragon story may be a blessing from nature, designed to protect instincts that would otherwise be lost.
Cultural evolution moves at a considerably quicker pace than biological evolution. As I’ve managed to demonstrate, the dragon myth has no negative impact on our biological survival. On the opposite, it promotes our progress and gives a name to long-forgotten fears. “One of the most surprising aspects of cultural evolution is… the assurance in which we can recognize commonalities in spite of large variations in underlying media, ” according to Dennett. In this case, it’s reasonable to assert that “the plot, not the letter, “ is what matters most about the dragon. To put it another way, it doesn’t matter how Chinese dragons vary from Slavic dragons; what matters is the dragon’s overall influence. Will there be instances where a meme spreads beyond the fact that it is harmful to the hereditary survival of those who bear it? There are several memes that make their hosts less likely to pass on their genes to their offspring.
Consider the concept of suicide as an especially simple example. Often, suicide is seen as a sign of emotional weakness or a desperate effort to regain possession of one’s life. As seen from this perspective, the psychological attraction can be very high. Memes, like our selfish genes, flourish in such a selfish manner that their longevity is only beneficial to themselves, according to Dawkins. There is no clear connection between a meme’s potential to spread and its selfish health or benefit to us. And, as Dennett elaborated, “what deserves special clarification… are the cases in which a concept is not embraced despite its reality or elegance, or is accepted despite its ugliness or falsehood.” However, just because cultural evolution seems to be much quicker than genetic evolution does not mean that meme-driven cultural evolution is unrelated to or even suppresses our genetic evolution. “We haven’t seen the long run yet, ” on the other side.
Our memes don’t have to work in our genes’ best interests. This is what Dawkins was getting to when he said that genetic adaptation isn’t the only way to evolve. Memes, as replicators, have begun their own evolution, which we see every day in the form of familiar thoughts, tunes, prototypes, and technological advancement. While it may seem narcissistic to say that human evolution is distinct from that of other primates, I believe it is possible that these recent replicators have freed us from the most strangling constraints of genetic evolution.
Regardless of how self-serving our memes are, we could not have lived without them and, as cultural groups, they have shaped and changed us. “What makes us unique is that we, alone among species, will climb 8 the imperatives of our chromosomes — thanks to the lifting cranes of our memes, ” writes Daniel Dennett. What is it about the dragon that has enthralled us throughout history? Is it nature’s raw force that cannot be tamed? Is it a psychological allegory for primitive apprehension? Is it possible that it’s an innate memory of our long-forgotten primitive past?
