Dragon ASCII Art

Tap a dragon to copy every line: 35 pieces, first a signpost whose warning you type over once pasted.

Dragon ASCII Art

/|/| \\_ __/_|_|__/o `-. <~\_,,___,,_.--' .---------------------. | HERE BE DRAGONS | '---------. .---------' | | | |Dragon on a signpost8 lines, 23 wideReady to copy

35 pieces. Tap one to copy it.

One line 5

Small, 2 to 4 lines 5

Medium, 5 to 9 lines 21

Large, 10 lines and up 4

Next step The two dragon emoji, 🐉 and 🐲

How it works

Thirty-five pieces of dragon ASCII art, all drawn for this page: dragons standing, flying, breathing fire and asleep on a hoard, three sea serpents, a wyvern, a three-headed dragon, two eggs and a footprint, from one line to 11.

Read the full guide

Pick a dragon by size

Height sorts the page: 5 pieces of one line, 5 of two to four, 21 of five to nine and 4 of ten or more. Fits a comment box marks the 29 within 8 lines and 30 columns, this site's rule of thumb and no app's. Search reads hidden words: hydra finds the three-headed dragon and ouroboros the one biting its tail.

Write your own warning

Four pieces carry words. The signpost takes 19 characters in place of HERE BE DRAGONS, the cave sign 12, the map 9 on each of two lines, and the one-line banner any number. On the three with walls, each added character comes out of the spaces beside it, or the right-hand edge moves. Search editable to see them.

Tips
  • The ASCII art dragon for a username is Dragon, one line: <~/\/\/\/\=(o`> is 15 characters, tail included.
  • In Fire dragon, one line, each { is a lick of flame. Type more for a bigger fire.
  • Small dragon, three lines is the dragon on the signpost, shield, tower and mountains. It will sit on your drawing too.

Questions and answers

Why did my dragon arrive in pieces?

Each run of spaces was folded into one and the wings slid left to the tail; the cat page shows why. Squash-proof lists the 8 pieces with none. A backtick is Markdown's mark for code and 31 contain one: put three backticks above and below.

Did old maps really say here be dragons?

Almost none. The one known historical use is Latin, HIC SUNT DRACONES, on the Hunt-Lenox Globe of the early 1500s. Medieval mapmakers more often wrote HIC SUNT LEONES, here are lions, or drew the monsters. No known old map has the English words.

What is the difference between a dragon and a wyvern?

In British heraldry, legs: a wyvern has two and a dragon four, while much of Europe calls both dragons. Here the wyvern has two legs and Standing dragon four. Eastern dragon has four short legs and no wings, as most Chinese dragons are drawn.

More tools

Browse Text styles

All 35 pieces

One line 5

  • Dragon banner, one line A pointed tail at each end of a line of words. Type anything between the braces. There is no box to break. 1 line, 23 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon eye, one line A slit pupil between two lids. Paste two with a space between them for a pair. 1 line, 11 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon, one line A pointed tail, four spines, a neck and a head with one eye. It faces right. 1 line, 15 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Fire dragon, one line The one-line dragon, one spine shorter, with a flame of braces leaving the mouth. Add braces for a bigger fire. 1 line, 20 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Sea serpent, one line Three humps above the water and a head at the right, with tildes for the sea. Add humps to make it longer. 1 line, 21 wide. Keyboard characters only.
Show all 35 pieces (30 more)

Small, 2 to 4 lines 5

  • Knight facing a dragon A knight with a shield and a raised sword, a dragon, and two lines of fire between them. 4 lines, 30 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Small dragon, three lines Two wings, two horns, two sets of claws and a tail with a point. It faces right. 3 lines, 17 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Squash-proof dragon head A head in profile with two horns, an eye, a nostril and a row of teeth, filled with colons where the spaces would be. 4 lines, 12 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Squash-proof sea serpent Three humps and a head in a sea of tildes, with colons filling the body. There is no run of spaces to collapse. 3 lines, 19 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Tiny dragon, two lines Two wings on the top line and everything else on the bottom one. 2 lines, 14 wide. Keyboard characters only.

Medium, 5 to 9 lines 21

  • Baby dragon Sitting up and facing you: two small horns, round eyes, a row of teeth, stub wings and a tail. 7 lines, 17 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon biting its tail A dragon bent into a ring with the end of its tail in its mouth, the symbol called an ouroboros. 8 lines, 18 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon breathing fire The three-line dragon with a cone of flame widening out of its mouth. The tildes are the fire. 5 lines, 28 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon cave Two eyes in the dark of a cave mouth, under a sign. Type over KEEP OUT with up to 12 characters and keep the sign centred with spaces. 8 lines, 26 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon egg An egg covered in scales, which is how you tell it from a hen's. Eight lines tall. 8 lines, 13 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon eye One eye with a slit pupil between heavy lids, five lines tall. 5 lines, 20 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon footprint Three clawed toes and a pad, five lines tall. Paste a column of them for a trail. 5 lines, 11 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon head in profile A long head facing right: two horns, a round eye, a nostril, a row of teeth and spines down the back of the neck. 9 lines, 29 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon on a hoard Asleep on a heap of coins with two rings and two dollar signs in it. The z's are optional. 7 lines, 24 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon on a shield The three-line dragon on a shield with a pointed base, the way a herald would place it. 8 lines, 20 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon on a signpost A small dragon lying along the top of a signpost. Type over HERE BE DRAGONS with a warning of your own, 19 characters at most, and keep it centred with spaces. 8 lines, 23 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon over a tower A castle tower with two windows and a small dragon arriving at battlement height. 8 lines, 30 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon with wings spread Facing you with both wings open, each one scalloped along the bottom edge like a bat's. 7 lines, 30 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Eastern dragon A long body in two loops with four short legs, whiskers, antlers and no wings, chasing a pearl. 7 lines, 30 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Flying dragon Seen from the side in level flight, with one wing up, the tail streaming behind and the claws tucked in. 7 lines, 34 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Hatching dragon The same egg with the top broken off and a head looking out of it, facing right. 8 lines, 13 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Sea serpent Three loops of body above the waterline and a horned head at the right. 5 lines, 30 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Squash-proof dragon egg A scaled egg five lines tall, drawn without a single space. 5 lines, 7 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Standing dragon A side view on four legs: two wings folded up, spines along the back, a pointed tail and a horned head facing right. 7 lines, 30 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Three-headed dragon Three necks rising from one body, with one head facing left and two facing right. 8 lines, 26 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Wyvern dragon on two legs A wyvern has two legs where a dragon has four. This one stands on both of them with its wings up, facing right. 8 lines, 27 wide. Keyboard characters only.

Large, 10 lines and up 4

  • Dragon face, front view Seen head on: two curved horns, a brow ridge, slit eyes, two nostrils and a row of teeth. 10 lines, 20 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Dragon over the mountains The three-line dragon crossing a range of three peaks at night. Delete the top line for a sky with fewer stars. 10 lines, 32 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Filled dragon silhouette A dragon filled in with # signs: two wings, a pointed tail, four legs and a horned head with its mouth open. Replace each # with another character and the dragon changes colour. 11 lines, 35 wide. Keyboard characters only.
  • Here be dragons map A corner of an old sea chart with a compass rose, a sea serpent and the warning. Type over HERE BE and DRAGONS with up to 9 characters a line. 10 lines, 36 wide. Keyboard characters only.

How this list was compiled: Every piece was drawn for this page and checked in a monospaced font on 2026-09-19; none is copied from an archive or another site. The set covers dragons standing, flying, breathing fire, asleep on a hoard and seen head on; heads, eyes, a footprint, an egg and a hatchling; a wyvern, a three-headed dragon, a wingless eastern dragon, sea serpents and a dragon biting its own tail; scenes with a tower, a knight, a shield, a cave, a mountain range and an old sea chart; four pieces with words to type over; five one-liners; and three multi-line pieces drawn without a single run of spaces. Each character was looked up in the Unicode Character Database, version 18.0.0: names and categories in https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/UnicodeData.txt, width classes in https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/EastAsianWidth.txt, the Emoji property in https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/emoji/emoji-data.txt, all read on 2026-09-19. Keyboard characters only means the 95 printable ASCII characters, U+0020 to U+007E. Squash-proof means no line starts with a space and no two spaces touch. The comment box badge means at most 8 lines and 30 columns: a rule of thumb of this site, not a promise about any app. Licence: own work