#zhao-lung

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

another goddamn guy

he was an illegitimate child and speaks like 15 languages

[atcharachara]

The Chinese form of military logistics favored Middleweights, but a few of their local breeds easily reach Heavyweight category.

The Zhao-Lung, or Emerald Glass, are green with red markings and a bristling spine of tendrils that can grow out into a mane. They come from the North and have a small rivalry with the Southern Shao-Lungs in the military.

The Shao-Lung, or Scarlet Flower, are orange or red with multiple horns and yellow crests, which can grow out into mane. It has two rows of small teeth and two pairs of curving fangs.

The Tien-Lung, or Celestial, is smooth glossy black with opalescent blue dapples on the bottom edge of its wing. It is distinguished from its more common relative the Qin-Lung, or Imperial, by having webbing between the flexible horns on its head like a frill and thin tendrils around its mouth. The former enjoys a status similar to aristocracy, while the latter is held to high expectations as part of the literati.

The Emerald Glass' head shape I based on the extant Chinese Alligator, while the Scarlet Flower borrowed from the extinct Chinese Gharial (Hanyusuchus), which also (roughly) matches where both breeds originated from. Hanyusuchus is found in South China, while the Alligator is technically in the vague north from there, in East China.

The choice of coloring the back and snout tendrils of Emerald Glass white lies in giving them some to the dragon present in the Qing flag (its horns are also modeled from that). The Scarlet Flower gets to have the nose (like Gharials, a gender feature) and the little crest it has on the cheek. Cutting up the Qin dragon into little parts...

I tossed around how to do a Celestial's ruff because reading "webbing between flexible horns"- FLEXIBLE HORNS?- threw me off. Qian supposedly had ribbed horns. Is that technically jewelry? Is it not? Might revise. Maybe not.

The Celestial's frill is unlike the other Chinese breeds, resembling the fish-like frills of certain Japanese dragons...

[atcharachara]

Sketch where I made the wrong decision to color so I have to commit with my mistakes. Featuring the... (checking an adjective dictionary) effervescent Shao-lung

Trying out a dragon page layout featuring the common but reliable Yellow Reaper. Most likely will stick to something simpler

A sketch page that stayed a sketch page thank god. Trying out how I wanted to draw HMD's dragon wings. Featuring the... uhh... gassy Zhao-lung

Rambling under the cut

It was while making the first when I decided to go back and actually decide how I'll do the wings. In the books, the fingers of the wing had never been described as fingers as far as I remembered. Spines that separate it in sections, mentions of wing joints (Unsure if this refers to spines or joints proper; Temeraire has more than others, French dragons having a distinctive shape of their second joint), Fidelitas being described to be the Yellow Reaper with extra "ribs" in his wings. I guess it can all be flowery figure of speech, but it reminded me a lot of how in medieval European dragon art a winged dragon has a fancy splayed out fin for a wing if it's not feathered.

So anyway, that's my reason for choosing to go a bit outside of keeping it like a bat's. The supporting spines being separate from the bones proper. I'm a fan of the pterosaur shape with at most three fingers: one or two as a digits that count separately, and the other as the leading edge and counts among the "spine".

I'll do a mix of the folded styles depending on breed. Most European breeds I'd probably draw with bird wing style folding because it's cool. Celestials (and perhaps Asian breeds in general), fold their wings tightly, all to heavily lean into the fan iconography when they flare it out.

The sketch wing is boringly practical that vaguely resembled a Chinese Junk's sail. My favorite was the butterfly-moth wing shape. That one just kicks ass.