Do you have any tips or tricks for drawing dragon wings in any folded/half foldes pose? I find the wing skin folds to be the most difficult thing when drawing dragons, they usually cover up half the image and just look wonky when I try ;w;
Alright, you’re about to see some diagrams that are not 100% biologically accurate but hopefully they’ll illustrate my points. Also, most of this I am basing on bat wings because that’s the closest real life reference we have to dragon wings. OKAY.
First let’s talk about what’s going on with the edges of the wing membrane. The whole membrane is like one giant stretchy piece of spandex. When all the digits are extended the membrane gets stretched taut, but when the wing relaxes the membrane retracts into itself. What does this look like?
The edges pull inward, like this. What they don’t do is fold up like a piece of fabric.
The very edge of the membrane often has a tiny ridge. This is caused by the folding of the skin, as well bundles of elastin fibers that we won’t get into right now! On occasion there will be some wrinkles, but they are generally on the membranes themselves and don’t present themselves much along the edge.
Check out these wrinkles here. The pink arrow shows a pretty “large” wrinkle, which is present on the plagiopatagium (membrane between the body and the last digit of the wing hand.) This is a very large piece of skin, so if there are going to be any large wrinkles they will be here! But even still, it’s not nearly as extreme as the floppy “fabric” example I drew above.
Here you can see more wrinkles on the wing surface that don’t really express along the edge nearly as much as you might expect. All things considered, they’re pretty subdued!
This wing is half-folded and it still just looks like big smooth shapes. They have to get pretty darn folded before wrinkles start happening. Until then, the edges of the wings are just gentle curved lines. Nothing to worry about!
As for poses, remember that a dragon wing is just like your arm. It has a shoulder, an elbow, a hand, and fingers. They are just really elongated versions of each. Just like on your hand, the fingers are flexible and can bend at the joints. Here are three quick steps for drawing crazy wing poses:1. Sketch out the arm and finger parts.
2. Draw a deeply curved line to represent the edge of the wing membrane (blue.) Also draw curved lines between each pair of knuckles (pink.) This will help you see where that membrane is going.
3. Erase the parts that are invisible from the viewer’s angle.
This was kind of just a fast overview. I hope it answered your question, and if it didn’t, shoot me another note and I’ll try to be more thorough!
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