Saturday, October 29, 2011

The Dragon is Finally Complete!

It's been a while since I last gave an update, but I've got two projects in the works (Ganesha and a sculpey version of the Ijiraq) and more to come, so another update soon won't be out of the question.

In any case, this post is mostly to announce that my Dragon sculpture is finally complete. He's truly a milestone piece for me in several ways, and one of them is the fact that he marks my first foray into creating a detailed base. I'm glad I pushed myself to make a base as opposed to just going with a plain wooden plaque, because I don't think this dragon would look right on an unadorned, plain base. Here's a photo:

The base began as a hunk of sculpey over an oblong piece of tightly packed aluminum foil, which I then shaped with hard, straight-edged tools to create an angular look. For this piece, even though the base is the last thing you, the viewers are seeing, it's actually the first thing I sculpted, and what I used to help me pose the armature for the dragon:


After I used it to pose the armature, it basically just sat around and gathered dust for a very, very long time while I worked on the dragon separately.

With a show entry deadline fast approaching, I decided it was past time I finished the base, so I mounted it to a wooden plaque and added some lava rock and vermiculite here and there around it to give it a little more realism and visual interest. After priming, I gave it a good coating of dark brown acrylic paint, and then began layering on lighter colors with a drybrush technique.

So, that's that, really. My next blog entry will be following soon. For all of you out there reading, thanks for doing so!

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