The 27^th Annual Creatin Contest  Part 1 – The Dragon

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I have a lovely group of miniaturist friends that I chat with daily.  One of these lovely people had entered the HBS Miniatures.com Creatin Contest a few times and encouraged us to join in. 

Looking at the kit for 2020 I really had no ideas until I started thinking about what sort of project I wanted to work on next.  I had been leaning towards fantasy and as we had our daughter’s partner living with us for the year, my thoughts turned to dragons – one of his favourite things.

I had previously envisioned myself creating a tower with a dragon wrapped around it.  However out of the blue popped this picture, clear as day, in my head – lucky I’m a visual thinker otherwise that may have been a frightening experience! J  A derelict cottage, walls falling down, dragon asleep in the basement, guarding his hoard.

As I started gathering the story together, I also started to consider how I would turn this kit into my vision.  I’m not an overly good one for planning on paper – I don’t draw out my ideas or plan measurements, I simply follow what’s in my head.  For each project I also print out a heap of inspiration pictures which I stick up around my work area.

One of the first things I did was create a dragon.  I figured that if I couldn’t make a dragon, there was no point continuing with the idea.  As we were in a full lockdown at the time, I had to make do with what polymer clay etc I already had.  Fortunately I tend to hoard resources and as I had been considering creating a dragon for a while, I already had a bunch of mica powders to give him a lovely metallic shimmer.

I chose to create a forest dragon as I knew I wanted a lot of greenery around the cottage.  I used balled up tinfoil as my base to build the dragon around.  I always use a ceramic tile to work on when I use polymer clay.  It can go straight into the oven and the clay doesn’t stick to it – as long as you keep the surface clean.

I made the basic shape and decided to have the dragon snoozing as that would be easier than trying to sculpt open eyes.  The head took a long time – he looked quite horse-like to begin with.  Once I had the body shape I created multi-coloured leaf-shaped scales and branch shaped spines which I then stuck on to his body.  I then baked him before applying the mica powders using a dry paint brush.  He took about 24 hours to create.  I made the wings separately and wasn’t 100% happy with them.

In the close-ups you’ll see my fingernail marks in the polymer.  I knew they were there but decided that as no creature is without marks, scars etc, that they could stay.  I don’t have long fingernails but they still managed to get in the way!

Another hint for working with coloured polymer clay, have a pack of baby-wipes close by.  They take the colour off your fingers and tools so that you don’t spread it around when working with different colours.

While I loved Bramble, my little forest dragon, I decided that he really was too small for what I needed.  Besides, I was keen to try to make another dragon!

I used what clay I had left for the under-body and decided that this time I’d go with my favourite colour – blue, for the scales.  Again I mixed the colours to achieve multi-coloured scales – this time however I chose to use a more ‘normal’ scale shape.  I followed exactly the same process I did with Bramble, but chose to make the wings differently.  In the end, I made two sets of wings and still wasn’t completely happy with how they sit on the dragon’s body.  I baked and then used mica powders to add the shimmer and sheen. 

This one I called Thistle and he turned out to be the perfect size.  You can get an idea of size in the photo that the cat photobombed!  He took about 20 hours to complete.

All in all I’m really pleased with how both dragons turned out.  Bramble now sits on my dressing table ‘guarding’ crystals while Thistle slumbers in the cottage surrounded by his hoard.

In my next post I’ll talk more about the creation of the dilapidated cottage.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave comments below.

Rebecca xx