Making of Joy ~ Another Custom Dragon

Hello everyone! Remember my project with the dragons? Well, I finally bring another update! This time, the dragon is complete because I had the eyes, although I had to redo the horns, and had some issues with the pastels. In any case, I think this one is very cute.

The dragon I'm presenting today is called Joy, and is a white Violet, painted with dandelions. I added a clear jaw, and a broken wing (so it would be one-winged), and I opened its eyes a bit. I also decided to do branch-styled horns, but towards the back. The runes are Wunjo (meaning joy, armony, balance even amidst chaos) and Ehwaz (movement, progress, change, symbolising a change for the better).

Anyways, here she is, and all the rants and WIPs are under the cut.

Painting

Oh, this one was interesting to paint. I know everyone is going to say that dandelions are weed, so on and so forth--I don't care. Dandelions are gorgeous, and that's my ultra subjective opinion. So, I wanted to give the dragon that sort of... "wild" appearance of the dandelions (which grow everywhere!). I also wanted to have kind of like plants growing from the bottom up. So I began basically by adding pastels shapes (which later turned out to be a problem) and used watercolour pencils to create the base layers of the dandelions.

The main issue with the green pastel was that it didn't hold--I would basically add a lot of it, get a strong colour, and seal only to find that a lot of it had faded. That doesn't happen with any of my other pastels, so I'm guessing it's a problem with this particular shade.

Anyways, as you can see above on the bottom row, after having the outline done with pencils, I used watercolours with my Army Painter Insane Detail to paint the dandelions. For the flowers, I only added a dark yellow to highlight some of the strands, while I used a single tone of green (with more or less water for thickness) to get the leaves/branches. It's not very visible on these photos, but I did some greyish windseeds, and then with acrylics, I added white windseeds. They aren't very visible with my phone camera, but look adorable in person.

The final step on painting was using a golden acrylic to add another layer to the dandelions, which gives them some darker strands. After all sealings, I used the regular gloss to add some touches here and there. I did a very think touch on some dandelions and in the cheeks, so there is a sheen there.

Issues with the Horns

So, after she dried, I sat down to begin assembling her... only to find problems. First, the horns were half-baked (apparently, I had set the temperature 10 degrees lower than intended), and they broke while I was struggling with them. However, that was not all! Second (see on the leftmost photo below), I had basically "crushed" the armature, so one of the horns didn't fit in the head's locking stubs. Then, the wing didn't fit--I hadn't accounted for the nape's curvature (centre photo), so the wing pushed against it, basically not fitting! D: To top it, the only horn that fit had broken, and it didn't fit against the faceplate--there was a weird shape that pushed against the faceplate.

After several days of thinking how to achieve what I wanted, I tackled the project again. First, I covered the parts in plastic not to damage the painting with raw polymer clay, and di new armatures. However, as you can see below (top row) I tried to: 1) surround the plastic stub with metal to avoid crushing it, and 2) create more wire branches so that they wouldn't break. With the wing, I took special care to push it back and low, trying to mimic the angle from the regular plastic half. Finally, I also put up little foil, as I only wanted a bit of a body and nothing else.

Now, to make them, since I had the pieces covered in plastic, I tried to model them in the head and wing themselves, to ensure the pieces would actually fit. This was challenging, because the gloves made me clumsy and sometimes the angle was strange. I did a similar process with the wing. Then, I made sure to put the damn oven at 130 degrees Celsius, and produced a very sturdy shape!!

Assembling

Some more time passed overwhelmed with other stuff, until I managed to sit again with this little project. The first thing I tried, of course, was the wing--and it was PERFECT!!. It fit seamlessly, it was soundly sturdy, and the head has the regular movement! After that, I rushed to test the horns and whether they fit on the plastic stubs, and against the faceplate--and they did! One was a bit loose, so I had to fill it in a bit and glue them. Also, they are not at all symmetrical, but branches are never symmetrical either!

Finally, I begun the very slow process of glueing all the sculpted dandelions and leaves into the branches. There are some closeups here, but I will show you the final dragon with prettier photos!