Before my mind's eye I see pernian dragons. Beasts bred under different sun. Their existence so closely tied with human care and planning. Bronze and brown, golden and mustard yellow, green and azure are the common colours of the dragons. There was one especially rare, small and white, but gifted with a skill which other kinds lacked. Regardless of their warm-earth or gleaming-lively intense presence they show to human eye, those creatures are an attractive image as scarely seen alone. The flock of dragons, can you imagine? Numbers and hundreds of them.
Magnificently spread across the endless blueness. Calmly resting side-by-side. Being on their way, chain-like arrangement. People gathered around them, men so small and fragile in comparision to brown, golden, green, blue or white creatures so massive yet harmless if treated with care.
Each one beast belongs to one out of several great dragonlairs called 'Weyrs' (plural of 'weyr'). Every one has an unique name. They are measured in feet.
Pernian world where they live allows them to fly across the sky, travel through Emptyness within a blink of an eye between distant places, have an individual man connected in mind with the beast who is therefore a Dragonrider, breath fire after consuming minerals of special type, even cross borderlines of past and future.
In this world they're limited to books pages and reader's imagination. Since they lack actual existence, they are an intentional kind of being. That means, 'one would like them to be'.
I believe I know where Mrs. McCaffrey took inspiration from. At least in the matter of colours of her dragons. Look at the not-empty container yard showered with light of afternoon sun. Then see the reason behind golden, brown, bronze, green, blue and white splendit of Pern upon the distant star called Rukbat.