Lightly sketch out the shape of your dragon’s head. If you don’t like the shape you can always erase and try again. Add you’re dragon’s nostril and eye placement. Draw lightly so you can erase anything you dislike easily. Then draw a sketchy circle for the shape of the rider’s head. Draw in simple lines that make out the forehead, nose, mouth, and chin.

Skip back to that awesome dragon in the background and add horns, spikes above his eye, and the place where his pupil will be. It doesn’t have to be looking down at it’s rider, that’s just how I made it. You can make him looking any direction you so please!

On your dragon add in membrane between the horns to make some cool frills. Draw in several fangs sticking out of his lip to show off, and shade the eye a little. Jumping down to your rider you should add his eye, eyebrow and maybe fill out and add his head and neck.

Give your human hair for his head, you can change it up if you want the rider to be a girl. I made mine a boy, but you can do either. Also erase several of the extra lines that were in his head, and in the dragon’s frill membrane, just to clear things up a little.

Continuing on your human simply draw in the rest of his hair and darken it. Leaping back to your dragon you should draw spikes from the tip of his nose and along his neck. Go ahead and add a few extra lines in the frill membrane and on the horns as the beginning of your shading.

Okay, now leave it at that and go over your previous pencil lines and make them darker so as to define your drawing a little more, add in your human’s body, a.k.a chest, shoulder, hand, arm and back.

Down to your rider, you may want to give him clothing! I’ve given him a sort of long sleeved shirt with a big hood on the back to cover his head with when it’s cold up in the skies.

Darken in everything and begin with light shading details, like creases on the clothing and folds in the membrane.

I know, it seems really long doesn’t it??
Now since your dragon is close up you may want to add scales on him. Draw them all in as loose circles to fill up all the space. Start lightly shading them by adding a darker bottom to each one.

Continue filling in all those scales, they can be random sizes, but all generally the same. Finish them by adding the darker part near the bottom of the scale that moves up to the sides.

Now the fun part! Add complete shading on your human as in parts where the hair overlaps the face, where the sleeve and arm meet. And where his hand is under the dragon’s head, maybe also add a bit more contrast to his hair. With his skin I did dark shading in the overlapping parts and smudged it with my finger to make it look smooth. It also adds to the rest of the skin colour. Jumping up to our ever awesomer dragon, darken the places where the frill comes and overlaps the neck, and where his rider is covering his lower jaw. Darkening it at the very back and lightening it towards the front gives the illusion of it being 3D-ish. Also maybe darken the line of his top jaw and along the dragon’s neck. Don’t forget to clarify the dragon’s eye, otherwise we may loose it. And on the horns and spikes only lightly shade them, since they are probably pearly white.