dragon sculpture

[Harmageddon]

Hey guys&girls,

I've been playing with clay on and off for a while now, in between my painting and drawing which is my main activity. I'm currently working on a dragon sculpt in supersculpey (great stuff) and I thought I'd put it up here for review/crit.

It's still a work in progress (wip), plan to finish it this weekend and bake it sometime next week.

It turned out a little bigger than anticipated so it won't fit in my oven anymore.
I'll bake it someplace else.

[Harmageddon]

This is roughly where it is now.

I figured I'd post some steps to show the great things I did.
And of course to show the stupid shit I did.

For example, I could have built the body mass with aluminium foil first.
That would save me a lot of clay.

The wings got extended to fit the body better. I didn't really plan this thing

Anyway. I like where it is going.

feel free to comment/crit/point out stuff - I'm here to learn and teach.
Mostly to learn still.

I would like to make casts too, but this thing probably will be impossible to cast. Then again I did not take that into consideration at all when I started this. I just.. started this.

[Rayvin]

I love the scaling and the face! Very nice. I look forward to seeing the progression.

[Harmageddon]

Rayvin: thanks! Glad you like him. I hope it gets somewhere near where I envision it to be.

small update...

I hope to finish the sculpt this weekend, or early next week.
I extended the right wing, left wing should also extend further.

[Harmageddon]

* sorry for the crappy picture quality*

Finally, it's baked!
Now on to the painting....

Some thoughts:
I think the little circles are airbubbles, luckily all of them are below the surface.
I learned a lot from this. What not to do, what might work..
But in all, I'm satisfied with it. What do you think?

[Harmageddon]

.. and a first layer of colour on this thing.
I'm using regular acrylics paint.
So far, it does not stick all that well, but good enough to work in layers I think.

[JoshS]

This turned out great. I really like the design of the head and the scales on the neck, the tail looks cool to. Looking forward to seeing the final paint job.

[shrunkendesigner]

Woah! That has turned out really nice. The scaled look amazing and you must have had such great patience to carve each one. Great job.

[Harmageddon]

JoshS: thanks dude! Paintjob will arrive sometime.. next month?
shrunkendesigner: Cheers mate! Patience, insanity...I'm just walking the rope is all.

Still not finished with the paint job on the dragon.
I'm kind of contemplating colors and such, it'll get there eventually.

Meanwhile, I've been busy with lots of other stuff, painting, photoshopping, whatnot.
But this is sculpt thread, so there we go!

Another dragon! This time I wanted to make a candle holder.
Sort of a dragon on a ruined building or tower or something, curling up and around the candle.
I don't know if it'll work in the end, that is to say, whether or not it will blacken the dragon's neck. My method to find out whether or not it will is as follows:
Just sculpt the thing, bake, paint, put a candle in and burn.
Then see what happens.
It's called science!!

I was a bit.. quick on the wireframe. A little over enthousiastic maybe.
So during sculpting I'm running into some anatomy problems. But yeah. Learning.

[JoshS]

The candle holder is looking good already, as with the last one the face looks great.
As long as you don't let the candle burn down until the flame is near the sculpey i don't think you'll have any problems, unless the melted wax affects the paintwork when its removed but if you seal the paint i don't see why it would.

[Harmageddon]

JoshS: thanks dude, glad you like the face. I'm quite pleased with it myself.
My process is still very chaotic and I probably should use an armature that sticks out of the sculpt at some place,
so I can use that to turn the sculpt while working on it. Now I just leave an area unfinished because my hands will
have to hold it there and my fingers melt into the sculpey. I can then finish up that area when the extremeties are done.

Well, that's been a while...but finally I've started working on this candle holder dragon sculpt again.
This time around, I will keep working on it during the weekends until it is done.
I did remove one of the wings for now so I can work on the stairs, hand, and all that.

[JoshS]

The candle holder is coming along nicely.
Possible solutions to your problem of moving the sculpt without squishing t, you could try fixing the armature to a wooden base, that way you handle the base instead of the clay when you need to move it. The downside of doing it this way is it make some parts hard to get to with your tools. Alternately you could get a lazy susan so you can rotate the sculpt without touching it. It looks like you've used sculpey firm on the front feet, have you tried mixing normal sculpture with firm? it make it much easier to handle the sculpture with out squishing it as well as being able to see fine details easier.

[Harmageddon]

JoshS: Thanks man. I think I'll definately try some of your suggestions to fix the sculpture.
This one is too far in to do that, so I'll just finish it the clumsy way

And yes, I did try mixing regular supersculpey with sculpey firm: I feel it works better than just the firm.
Sort of like the best of both worlds really. I use that mix mainly in tiny pointy details, such as hands, claws on the wings and such.

update: did some more detailing, everything beneath the left wing is now done, so added the left wing.
NB: as you can see, I use tiny chickenwire in the wings for structure.

[AimBiZ]

That's a sweet looking sculpt. I'm impressed by how the scales came out.

[Harmageddon]

AimBiZ Thanks, glad you like it.

So, I baked it yesterday, a little too long so some parts came out .. well, darker than they should.
But I don't think it really matters, now I have to decide what color it's going to be. Suggestions?
Not the best pictures but you get the idea.
Added the one sculpting tool I've used, it's about the size of a pencil.

[Harmageddon]

update: a first layer of paint.
I decided on a red, rusty color.

[Harmageddon]

And one more with the approved method of not really thinking about the wireframe.
This means it will be impossible to make a cast of this thing I think.
I started this thing back in august 2012 but it got shelved, together with the previous one.
Now I'm determined to finish it!

I should really start to think about how to build these sculpts so that I can make casts of them one day.
But for now, this project is one without too much thinking.
It started out as some sort of daemon, skin on bones kind of thing.
I envisioned a gnarly face and leathery skin but then it transformed into another dragon. Ah well.




that was august, here's where it's at now...