DIY Watercolor Hot Chocolate Themed Dragon

This cute little dragon will be sure to warm your heart on a cold day!

It's a simple watercolor painting, and only requires watercolors, a pencil, and a fine tipped black marker or pen. If you are snowed in and need something to do, sit down with a cup of real hot cocoa and paint this easy, adorable, hot chocolate themed dragon!

• One sheet of watercolor paper
• Assorted watercolors
• Pencil
• Eraser
• Fine tipped black marker
• A flat, medium-sized paintbrush
• A small paintbrush

Before you can begin to use an permanent medium, you need to sketch out your design with pencil on your watercolor paper, while you can still erase things.

The hot chocolate in a mug was not very intricate or detailed. I started by sketching out the shape of the mug, and then added a triangle to the top of is as a guideline for the whipped cream. I added bumps to my triangle, and curved lines connecting them to create a stylized cupcake frosting look.

To sketch the dragon, I began by drawing a circle for it's head, and a line of motion that curves from where the base of it's skull will be, jutting out around the dragon's chest, and curving behind the mug for where the tail will eventually be. After that, I drew a box to represent it's ribs, and another one for it's pelvis. I connected the the boxes and the head, making my line curve inward, towards the line of motion around it's stomach, and slowly tapering it off to create a tail. I drew lines where i wanted the arms and legs to be, and sketched small boxes on the end for feet. I then gave shape to the limbs and added details such as eyes, the tongue, horns, wings, scales, and ears.

This step is very simple. All I did was trace my sketch with a black fine-tipped pen, and then erase all the pencil lines from my paper.

Here is where we begin painting! I used three paintbrushes of differing sizes, watercolors (obviously), and a paper towel to get extra water off of my paintbrush.

I began by mixing red, orange, and brown paints to make a color for the mug, once the mug was painted, I mixed red and brown to make a slightly darker color that I used to paint shadows on the cup. For the base color of the whipped cream, I mixed white with a tiny bit of red and brown to make a very light tan-ish pink. I painted with this color along the bottom half of every spiral of whipped cream, and completely along the left edge, which is the side I had decided to put shadows on. I used a tan color to accent the shadows, and give the picture more depth. I painted the cinnamon stick brown, and mixed brown with black to shade the bottom and it's inside.

I started by painting the dragons horns (I have no idea why). I used dark brown and left two little white spots on the opposite side of the shadows to create highlights. I painted the dragon a cream color, and added tan shadows. I painted the ears and tongue a very light pink, with darker pink for shadows. I made the scales an orange, with red shadows, and the wings tan at the tips, getting darker and turning red and orange as I went up. Finally, I painted the iris of the eye yellow.

After you are done painting, I would recommend leaving the picture under a pile of books or other heavy objects for a few hours, since watercolors tend to warp the paper. As you can see, I also added a little red heart on the side of the picture as a finishing touch.

Admire your finished work, you're done!