Dragon Frame of Mind...

I've had dragons on my mind a lot lately.  It's probably because I listen to audiobooks while I work in the studio and a lot of them feature dragons.  I just finished listening to Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy: "A Discovery of Witches", "Shadow of Night" and her most recent, "The Book of Life".  One of the main characters has a dragon as a familiar.  I also just finished listening to "Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen" by Garth Nix and there's a dragon of sorts in it.

Right now, I'm listening to "The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic" by Mily Croy Barker.  The dragon in this book isn't benevolent though and isn't endearing, but he's there!  Oh... and a little show called, Game of Thrones is starting back up this weekend.  (As if you didn't know already!)

So I've been thinking a lot about dragons.  Not only have they been in what I've been listening to, watching, and reading... but I have also thought about having some classes this summer featuring dragons.  I would love to have Les Polinko come out and do a baby dragon workshop at the Gallery.  I've also been talking with Christi Friesen for a few years about coming out and teaching.  Maybe she'll teach how she makes her dragons!  She does have a book called, "Dragons" that's all about how to create them in her style.  Hey... I might even consider showing some of my techniques in dragon fabrication.

In any event, here's one of my recent ones:

I made this for a friend's daughter.  It's meant to be suspended from the ceiling, so it can fly around.

Here's a close-up of the face.  As you can probably tell, this dragon has a lot of horns and spikes.  They were super pokey, so I had to file and trim them down so they wouldn't be quite as sharp.

This is a view from above with the overall silhouette.  I like it, but in hindsight, I wish that I would have constructed the wings a little differently... maybe so that light could pass through them and look less thick.  We'll just pretend that this dragon is extra muscly.

Here's a profile shot of the dragon.  Technically this is more of a wyvern since there are no legs.  I thought about adding legs, but I liked the clean, speedy lines without them... they're more aerodynamic that way.

The dragon is made almost entirely of polymer clay.  I smoothed polymer clay over a lightweight, aluminum foil armature and embedded glass beads for eyes and a metal bail so that it can be suspended.

Even though I'd make some changes, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out!  (OH!  I heard from my friend and her daughter loves it!)