Dragon prompts by age
“Use this prompt” fills in the generator and sets the detail level. Every page is drawn fresh, so if one misses, change one detail and try again.
| For | Prompt | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Ages 2 to 5Simple | a friendly baby dragon hatching from a cracked egg, small horns and little wings, big simple shapes, no background A round, smiling face and a cracked egg: a dragon with nothing scary about it. |
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| Ages 4 to 7Simple | a friendly dragon flying with its wings spread wide above a few clouds, big simple shapes, no background Two big wings to color, each one a separate shape. |
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| Ages 6 to 9Medium | a dragon with large bat-like wings, horns and spikes along its back, perched on a castle tower, clean bold outlines, white sky A storybook scene with bricks, battlements and spikes for an older child to work through. |
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| Ages 9 to 12Medium | a long wingless East Asian dragon curling through clouds, with a flowing mane and scales drawn as outlines, clean bold outlines The other kind of dragon (see below): long, wingless and at home among the clouds. |
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| Teens and adultsMedium | a dragon coiled around a tall rock, every scale on its body drawn as a separate outline, clean bold lines Hundreds of scales, each one its own shape, for a long evening of coloring. |
Two kinds of dragon
Dragons in legend come in two broad kinds. In medieval Europe they were usually shown with wings and a barbed tail, breathing fire. In East Asian mythologies the dragon is a beneficent creature, and Chinese and Japanese dragons, though regarded as powers of the air, are usually wingless (Britannica). The English word comes from the Greek drakōn, which first meant any large serpent.
- A European dragon: “a dragon with bat-like wings, horns and a barbed tail”.
- An East Asian dragon: “a long wingless dragon with a flowing mane curling through clouds”.
Norse warriors painted dragons on their shields and carved dragon heads on the prows of their ships (Britannica). A dragon-prow ship makes a good page for a history lesson.
Choose how fierce the dragon is
| Mood | Words to use | Ages |
|---|---|---|
| Friendly | baby, smiling, round, little wings | 2 to 5 |
| Adventurous | flying, castle, knight, treasure | 6 to 9 |
| Fierce | spikes, horns, scales, smoke drawn as outlines | 10 and up |
Fire and smoke print best as outlines. Write “flames drawn as outlines” so they stay white to color; words such as glowing or dark pull the page toward large black areas.
The real dragon: the Komodo
One dragon is real. The Komodo dragon is the largest living lizard in the world: the largest verified one reached 10.3 feet (3.13 meters) and weighed 366 pounds, and wild Komodo dragons live only on a few islands in Indonesia (Smithsonian's National Zoo). Make one page of a dragon from legend and one of the Komodo, and let children compare.