Dragons of 2014
WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?!
Oh...here they are.
The first 8 months of Nocturnal Creations has been an interesting experience so far and i thought it'd be fun to see if i'd made any progress. By far the pieces most suited for this little experiment were those that I've created the most of, Dragons.
Why have you made so many dragons?, I'm not entirely sure. I've never been the biggest dragon fan, but i have found myself spending endless days sculpting hundreds of the little critters and i've noticed that my "style" and techniques have slowly progressed over time.
First Dragons 2014
(March 2014)
This first trio are not technically the first ever dragons I've sculpted, but they were the first in a while, and the only ones i have photos of.
These wee fellas were hand-sculpted from super-sculpey. At this stage all i had was a butter knife and my hands to work with as i hadn't brought the majority of my craft supplies from my Mums house when i moved, so they took roughly 1.5 - 2 hours each to sculpt as i was struggling with the lack of tools, and refreshing my skills after a long break from sculpting anything larger than charm bracelet charms. After a curing they were hand painted with "value" craft acrylics...repeatedly until the paint finally stuck.
Eastern Dragons
(June 2014)
5th June 2014 (Left) 13th June 2014 (Below)
These wee guys were made because i wanted to try out a new style, and hadn't quite worked out how to make wings yet.
(Left) This was my first piece using a basic armature made from tin foil and he's around 2.5 inches in length, I really struggled as my clay was super soft and he sagged a little during baking.
(Below) This was a request for a friend, and i really focused on getting this guy to look semi-decent, i spent extra time researching anatomy (Based on a leopard gecko) and it took approximately 6 hours of sculpting, rage quitting, re-sculpting, texturing and painting. I developed my basic armature by strengthened it with armature wire.
Pocket Dragons(September 2014)
I finally picked up all my coloured fimo from my Mums house and unfortunately discovered it had dried out after sitting in a box for almost 5 years (Woops) so i spent 4 days reconditioning it back to a usable condition (Tutorial coming soon in a new entry). Even after that process the clay was still rock soild and agony to manipulate, so it wasn't quite the ideal consistency to work with, but i despise waste, so these wee fellas were born.
Bearded-dragon Dragon
(September 2014)
(Step by step W.I.P. photos coming soon)*Dimensions*
Wingspan: 10"
Nose to tail: 5"
Height: 4.5"
This piece is probably still my biggest achievement, For those of you who follow me elsewhere you'll know i have a bearded dragon called Kira that i love to pieces and people always joke that i should make her little wings so she can be a real dragon. So i thought i'd take things a step further and make a sculpture depicting her as a "real" dragon.
Total of around 15 hours work from start to finish
D.I. Smaug
(October 2014)
Dimensions H 6" x D 5" x W 4.5"
Commissioned gift for a former a police officer and LOTR fan.
This was both my most enjoyable and challenging commissions to date for several reasons, one was finding a decent reference image of Smaug as a lot of the screen captures were pretty useless, although it did give me a excuse to have a movie marathon again. Another challenge was creating the base, i'd previously never made a base for any of my sculptures, thankfully this particular ones was simpler than i first thought albeit time consuming due to all the individually made Fimo coins and jewels. and added detail of individually placed faux gems.
Bottletop Scrap Dragons
(November 2014)
These wee critters were created in a desperate attempt to justify why i had a bag of close to 1000 bottle tops squirreled away as ones of those "That'll come in handy" kind of things and to use up some of my remaining Fimo. I'm a great believer in reusing as much as possible and upcycle as much as i can from jars and bottle tops to the materials i use for packaging. I hate waste >_>
Improved Dragons
(November 2014)
After 8 months of scrimping and saving i finally had enough money put aside to treat myself to a brand new box of Premo Sculpey clay thanks to the recommendations from several other polymer clay artists. This has been a huge break through for my coloured clay sculpting, i've been so used to battling with old fimo that was close to rock solid. I'm still in the early stage of learning the art of polymer clay but i personally see a huge improvement from those first few pieces i made back in march to those from this month.
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