Here's where you get to have fun! You now can add color. I recommend using Prismacolor pencils, If you're serious about this, but any colored pencils will do, even crayons are fine. But for the best effects, you need to have three different shades of whatever color you're using. (If you just can't find three different shades, you can use black and white for the darkest and lightest shades, but it doesn't look as good.)

It's very important that you go slowly on this. You can see, if you look closely, the places where I made mistakes because I was in too much of a hurry. Once you've started putting down color, there's no going back (unless, of course, you use colerase, but even those don't really come off well) One more thing before you start, you can forget about the second rule or drawing, and start using my third rule: when coloring, put it on as dark as it gets! Now, you need to select a color that you have three shades of. (Here's where a big box of crayons is great for those of you that can't afford fancy pencils.) Green is the one I picked, a good traditional dragon color. Then, you take the darkest of these three shades and start laying down shadows. Imagine where the light would come from. I've indicated my light source here with an arrow. On all parts of the dragon opposite that light, you lay down dark areas. Now, this dragon is striped, which makes it harder. In all the places where dark areas overlap the stripes, I've switched colors. Because I picked yellow for the stripe color, I used brown for the stripe shadows. After you've laid down all your shadow, you need to add your highlight. Take the lightest of your three colors and look at your light source again. In all the places where the light would fall directly, color in light spots. Again, you need to use a separate color for the stripes. After you've done that, you're ready to move on to the next step.

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Now that you have the highlight and shadow you need to lay down your middle tone. So, haul out your green and get ready to wear about an inch off it. You need to lay your color down thick for the best effect. Be careful as you color of rubbing your hand across spots that you've already colored in, as that will smear color across spots that ought to be blank, and you can't erase now, so this is a bad thing. Also take care not to color with mid tone over any of your highligts. You can color over the shadows, that won't hurt them a bit since you're putting light over dark and the dark will still show up. The stripes also need to be done with care. Once you're done with that though, you're almost finished.

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Here's where you put the finishing touches on. The first thing you need to do is to blend your highlight, midtones, and shadows. You can blend shadows simply by taking your midtone and coloring over the shadowed areas with it, pariculary around the places where the shadow and midtone meet, until it looks smooth and even. You do highlight the same way, except that you use the hihglight color to blend, not the midtone. As soon as that is done, the only thing left is doing the details, starting with the undersides of the wings. Don't color both wings the same, since on one you're seeing the top, and the other the bottom. To do the veined effect on the near wing, you first lay down a network of light pink lines. Then over that, you color with yellow, pink, or peach, depending on the exact color you want. In this case, I used yellow. Color fairly dark, but not as dark as you can. Then, go over the whole thing in a light cream or white. Once you've done that, you can finish up with the claws and the spikes on the dragon's neck and back. Keep your light source in mind as you color them in. They'll be shaded just like any other part of the dragon. The thing that I always leave for last is the eyes. They are the most important part of the drawing. They make your dragon look intelligent, or evil, or cute, depending on how you draw them. You begin by lightly outlining the light spot with the color you're going to use for the eye color. Put the light spot as near to your light source as you can without it touching the side of the eye. Then, take your black, or a darker shade of the color that you're using, and shade around the light spot. Last, use your eye color and fill in the rest of the eye, coloring over the dark areas untill they blend, but being carefull to avoid coloring over your light spot.

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Now you have a finished dragon. Doesn't it look great?