Here be Dragons

I really am on a Polymer Clay roll these days, I simply can't stop myself from thinking and making lots of polymer clay stuff. My recent "thing" is making faces with semi translucent beige Sculpey clay, I am hoping to be happy anough with the faces I make myself to make moulds out of them and then reproduce them for tree people, suns, moons and what have you. Basically anything you can possobly put a face on. 

Here are some examples of my weird faces...

They all turn out unique, but I have yet to manage one that looks kind of friendly and peaceful. Although... maybe a weird looking sun might be good, too? I think I have to give that one a try soon.

But from the faces I went on to something more fantasy inspired: Dragons. We all love Dragons, don't we? I do, and all of them, the scary western dragons and the benevolent asian dragons. They are all beautiful. So I had a look on good old YouTube and I stumbled across "Velvetorium", an extremely talented lady that make tutorial videos for making polymer clay journal covers, pendants, bracelets and more. Here you can find a link to one of her tutorials (my favourite) 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ImXEj6Q6mjc 

and you can probably see where my inspiration came from. I hope I have enough variation in my Dragon so it is not a copy...

I used Premo! polymer clay (my local art & hobby shop is starting to stock it now) and I found it was much better to handle than the Sculpey III I was using so far. It is slower to condition but because it is not overly soft it does not show fingerprints as much. And the ones you do see are obviously part of the design ;-) 

I used Premo! Peacock Pearl for the whole Dragon, with some white for the shaded wings. I think the technique has a name but I don't know it so Here is what I did to get the shading for the wings.

Another polymer clay artist that has a great influence on what and how I do it has been Christi Friesen, I used some of her leaf techniques for the flowers and in the next picture I will show you I used her leaf technique and also made a leaf cane from one of her tutorials but with my own colours.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hdo6Hl-5pU

This particular Dragon was made with Sculpey III. 

Just before baking the Dragons I went at them with a fine brush and eyeshadow (mica powder is on order) and emphasized the background textures and also details on the dragons, leaves and flowers.

And now I think I will go and try to make a funny looking sun...