Art: Making a Ploymer Clay Dragon

Recently I picked up a new hobby. There is this certain artists whose work I REALLY would love to get my hands on but her pieces sell for well over $400 a pop. Not the kind of money I have (or had due to house). So I figured, why not try to make my own and learn a new skill?

I only used the artist as a reference. I don't copy her art, I adapt some aspects to my own. Previous to finding a how by the artist I was just winging it so my dragons are clumsily made, not high quality. I want to get better so I keep practicing.

Here are the current ones I've made (earilest to latest):

Toots

Robert (keeps falling apart)

Annabelle

Ben

Whisper (has cracks on the back side of her tail)

Devilon

Shiba

Clover

Whisper was made after seeing the how to tutorial video. She didn't turn out right, her tail cracked. But I was able to gain the ability to make wings finally. Whisper is also considerably smaller than all the others. She only took about 1 block of base color for her whole body. limbs and such. A money saver. But she was considerably harder to keep smooth, add horns and keep limbs attached.

I started sketching out my dragons first then using that as a base and then using other artist's embellishment techniques to create my dragons. Here is the phase of a first gen dragon:

First I named the pose "Scared/Frightened." Then I sketched it out. And pick the colors.

Then I made the base entirely of clay (now I use tin foil as an base). This is a picture with the tail also added which was my second step. I have become considerably better at adding tails after viewing a tutorial that said so make an indent in the tail top and THEN attached it. Makes smoothing much easier.

Thirdly, after the base and tail I did my best to add the feet and contour the back with an arch. I'm not great at anatomy (I'd like to take some classes) I just used my cats as reference. The tail kept drooping so I had to add wire to get it to stay up. I was afraid to use it at first because I didn't know if it would crack but I did know the temperature you bake them at is low enough that nothing would happen to the actual metal.

Fourth step was to start deciding and adding embellishments. At first I tried to add them all except any jewels. This proved a bad idea on earlier dragons because the part became brittle and easily fell off with the brush of a cat's tail. So from the second dragon on I pretty much only added some parts that would be the most secure to the actual base and then baked horns etc separate and super glued them on after all cooled.

Here is the final picture. I do have 2-3 unique techniques I use with every dragon, The swirl horn at the tip of the nose, the leaf or diamond shaped tail end and most of the time the "scale" at the base of the biggest horn.

So far this has proven to be a very relaxing and accomplished feeling I have gotten out of anything in a while. It gets harder and harder as I try to mimic and incorporate more techniques but I think if I keep working at it, maybe when I've got my style down packed I can start selling these little dudes.

Which reminds me, I don't have a name for these yet! I might branch out into things other than dragons so I'm trying to think of a name that will encompass that expansion. Lil buds and Mini dragons were stupid names I was thinking of but I need to seriously consider the brand and com eup with something my own. If you have suggestions please leave them below!

Just made this week:

Joy