Well, I’m not really a specialist. I didn’t paint a lot of dragons, I’m not really in heroic fantasy art. I found this picture in my “oldies” folder, it’s a caricature of the actress Zhang Ziyi.
As you can see, I was quite inspired by the little dragon of Mulan, the Disney movie. The idea was to do cute/funny/expressive characters. Of course, I’m not the only one … I know a lot of very good illustrators who use to paint cartoon dragons. Here’s a list of some of them …
Paul Kidby is famous for the Discworld artwork. He works with Terry Pratchett since a long time. He uses acrylic and do fantastic sculptures too.
Bobby Chiu and Kei Acedera are among the most popular digital painters. Bobby paints incredible creatures. They also give online courses.
Viktor is a digital painter who works for video games. I don’t think he did a lot of dragons but this one is probably one of my favourite.
Animator, writer, illustrator … Chris did the design of the characters for ‘Lilo and Stitch’.
My aussie and talented friend David is a digital illustrator. His style is incredibly “clean” and precise (probably more than mine). I don’t want to use a wacom tablet, so he’s till working with a mouse … Erf ^^’
http://loopydave.deviantart.com/
I use to call him “Junior”. I decided to “adopt” him few years ago when I realized that he could do an incredible amount of details on his pictures. He did a lot of fantasy stuffs, some of his dragons are very impressive.
He is a brillant digital painter from Portugal. A lot of cartoon dragons on his blog …
Love this post! It's awesome to see these different interpretations. Viktor's is definitely my favorite though, so fun! Thanks for putting this together.
Made me remember that I have some dragons too:
Smaug: (top left)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Dfist3_ybiI/UApvwsuMQyI/AAAAAAAABNY/o3kI2FA6Dvc/s1600/s5.jpg
And some personal dragons:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PqGilxAuvJw/TrRStB91afI/AAAAAAAAA9Y/KQZwloe2ybA/s1600/dragoncave.jpg
http://me-artbook.blogspot.de/2011/08/fire-dragon-project.html
Would love if you take a look.
http://melaamory.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24#/d4kb18p my dragon)
haha I want that as personal dedication when I finally get my hands on your Artbook Sugardaddy!
You will have it, Junior ๐
Beautiful works! All of them lovely.
An article on cartoon dragons and not one mention of Nicolas Marlet!?
I like that you included Paul Kidby though, his dragons are adorably pathetic.
You're absolutly right ! I forgot him !
http://artofnicomarlet.tumblr.com/
I thought I would see some Chris Sanders. Great post and all the artist did a wonderful job.