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Description

A little tongue-in-cheek picture for Smaugust. It’s obviously supposed to be a jab at a very infamous picture I’m sure everyone looking at this is familiar with. When it comes to folklore and mythology, there is no set standard for what one thing is supposed to look like. Even when dealing with something as unique as the Fafnir there are different variations upon the central idea based on time, place, and the artist in question.
EDIT: Alright, maybe I should have explained this better. In the aforementioned "chart" it assigns specific names of dragons to specific body plans. I switched this up by deliberately changing around the body shapes of the dragons in question, since there is no correct body plan for any one type of dragon. I choose these five because of my familiarness with them and drew them like how I like to draw their folkloric/mythological counterparts (substituting the generic dragon for a drakon). These five are far from the only types of dragons out there, it's just their names are often used in conjunction with a specific body-layout. As in the apocryphal chart, they list a set of characteristics that "define" the dragon. For instance, under wyvern it lists two legs and two wings, saying this defines a wyvern. In parody of this I put down traits associated with the dragons (at least, the Scandinavian version of the drake and the literary lindworm) that would better define them, like the drakon's sleeplessness or the wyvern's origins in the bestiary vipera, the only snake said to give birth to live young.
And, while I do tend to draw certain dragons in certain ways, like having two-winged and two-legged wyverns and snakey lindworms, these aren't the rules I apply to how I draw/write dragons. The rules guiding them are not biological nor sensible. A legless wyvern may give birth to a four-legged one, it's just how they do. In some cases, like the Greek drakons, there is a very strong trend towards a serpentine body, but it's not a set in stone rule.

Description

A little tongue-in-cheek picture for Smaugust. It’s obviously supposed to be a jab at a very infamous picture I’m sure everyone looking at this is familiar with. When it comes to folklore and mythology, there is no set standard for what one thing is supposed to look like. Even when dealing with something as unique as the Fafnir there are different variations upon the central idea based on time, place, and the artist in question.
EDIT: Alright, maybe I should have explained this better. In the aforementioned "chart" it assigns specific names of dragons to specific body plans. I switched this up by deliberately changing around the body shapes of the dragons in question, since there is no correct body plan for any one type of dragon. I choose these five because of my familiarness with them and drew them like how I like to draw their folkloric/mythological counterparts (substituting the generic dragon for a drakon). These five are far from the only types of dragons out there, it's just their names are often used in conjunction with a specific body-layout. As in the apocryphal chart, they list a set of characteristics that "define" the dragon. For instance, under wyvern it lists two legs and two wings, saying this defines a wyvern. In parody of this I put down traits associated with the dragons (at least, the Scandinavian version of the drake and the literary lindworm) that would better define them, like the drakon's sleeplessness or the wyvern's origins in the bestiary vipera, the only snake said to give birth to live young.
And, while I do tend to draw certain dragons in certain ways, like having two-winged and two-legged wyverns and snakey lindworms, these aren't the rules I apply to how I draw/write dragons. The rules guiding them are not biological nor sensible. A legless wyvern may give birth to a four-legged one, it's just how they do. In some cases, like the Greek drakons, there is a very strong trend towards a serpentine body, but it's not a set in stone rule.