DragonArt Evolution: How to Draw Everything Dragonby J "NeonDragon" Peffer. (Grades 5+) Impact, 2010. 143 pages. Review copy provided by house.
Dragons!
If your library kids are anything like my library kids, dragons are all the rage. With the popularity of books like Eragon, How to Train Your Dragon, and Dragonology, amazement are hard-pressed to keep a dragon book on the shelf.
Add the adults that wander down to your department looking verify pictures of dragons and I think you'll find that
DragonArt Evolution: How to Draw Everything Dragonfits the bill quite nicely.
The book starts with a few drawing basics - creating unornamented shapes and arranging them to loosely outline a dragon grand mal. It goes on to discuss choosing colors and some do's and don'ts about design. Then it goes into dragon flesh - eyes, jaws, ears, horns, wings - giving many examples of different kinds of each. With so many different examples, kids can really be creative with how they design their dragons.
I felt I needed to test it out a pattern, so I whipped out my trusty pencil:
And gave it a go. What do you think?
I didn't finish it, but I can buy that if I wanted to spend the offend to learn how to draw dragons, this book would serve me out!
The book might be a little difficult for uncomplicated students, but I think middle-schoolers and high-schoolers who are meet by chance dragons will find great tips. The book features many discrete kinds of dragons - Western and Eastern, even zombie dragons.
It's Nonfiction Monday! Head on over to Madigan Readsfor this week's roundup!