Prohibition on drawing imaginary pictures of animate beings

The focus of the prohibition on image making is images of animate beings, whether they are sculpted or drawn on walls or fabric or paper, or they are woven, and whether they are drawn with a quill or pen or made with a machine, and whether the image is of the creature as it naturally appears or whether imagination comes into play and it is made smaller or larger, or made beautiful or distorted, or the skeleton inside is shown in the picture.  

The reason for the prohibition is that what is represented is animate beings, even if they are imaginary images such as those that are drawn to represent ancient peoples such as the pharaohs and commanders and soldiers during the Crusades, or images of Jesus and Mary that are placed in churches, etc. This is because of the general meaning of the texts and because of the imitation of the creation of Allah, and because it is a means that leads to shirk. 

From Fataawa al-Lajnah al-Daa’imah, 1/479. 

Muslim narrated that ‘Aa’ishah said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) came from a journey and I had hung a curtain at my door, on which were pictures of horses with wings, and he told me to take it down. 

This hadeeth indicates that images of animate beings are not allowed even if they are imaginary pictures of things that do not exist in real life, because there are no horses with wings in real life. 

And Allah knows best.