The Chinese New Year in 2024 is coming up, I decided to create a Year of Dragon illustration in Procreate, inspired by paper-cutting. The key is to draw the whole dragon shape first, then use the eraser in Procreate to carve out the parts I don’t need. I also draw a border for my dragon, which is inspired by Chinese border designs.

You can read about my creative process for this work in the blog post here.

The idea started from last year in 2023, when I drew a Year of Rabbit illustration in a paper-cutting style. And I intend to draw a Chinese zodiac every year until I collect all 12 of them. You can see my Year of Rabbit illustration in this blog post here.

Enjoy the tutorial and hope you can also draw your own dragon.

Happy creating!