The uncle of all dragons

A few months ago I was contacted by (and I have to stand up and salute when I type this) the head of the Guild of Makers that I’m a member of, asking me if I could sculpt some DRAGONS!

Wooot. oh… Missed a line… Some dragon hands? Whaaaaa?

It all makes sense once you get down into the details. The mind lurking on the shoulders of Dr Lucy Rogers who first appeared on this blog many years ago, had conceived of a way to make a smoking dragon head using an e-cigarette (those things people make huge clouds of smoke that smell like Bakewell tarts) and a cast dragon head.

I approve 100% of the materials used by the way. Dragon Skin is one of my favourite mould making materials and I use it a lot for my castings. My current moulds for Loki (GRAAAA! Still not done a write up for him!), Odin and Freyja all use Dragon Skin moulds.

I was handed* a brief which was to make two pairs of hands as if they’re exploding out of the wall and to sit on either side of these smoking heads.

So armed* with this concept, I knuckled* down to come up with something handy**.

At some point, I bought a large 4lb pack of Aves Epoxy sculpt thinking it would be cool to do these in something new, but ended up falling back to my old favourite, Super Sculpey. Stick with what you know.

I spent ages doing the scales on each one. I was going mad some evenings when I was doing them as I felt I wasn’t getting far and then all of a sudden… BOOM. Done.

The two right hands got a little over done in the oven, but other than a little darkening down, they came out fine. The claws then got added with Milliput.

I then made the left as if they’re in the process of ripping through the wall. Once baked, I cut up the wooden bases and carved chunks into the back to fit wall mounts.

The back of the mounts had a recessed area so the hangers wouldn’t stick out and remained flush to the wall.

Many tubes of glue gave their lives in the process. A minutes silence for them please.

Next came the smashed wall bits. I finally used the Epoxy sculpt and its quite nice to use. I made the wall texture by scraping cracks and then pressing a stone onto the soft Epoxy to give it a rocky surface.

I regret not making the whole hands out of them a bit now. They fit well on the walls.

Some paint. Mainly bright but simple colours, as they had to match the castings. I didn’t do as much shading as I could have done but it was nice to do something simple.