Sea Dragon Head Bust

Back in January I came across an artist called Dan Reeder who had developed paper mache dragons and filmed time lapse videos showing his creations from start to finish on YouTube. After watching a few of these I bought his book online showing his method using fairly cheap materials to create pieces out of paper mache and cloth mache.

I drew up a rough design based on what I learnt from his books and my own knowledge of paper mache. Materials wise I would only need newspaper, an old bed sheet, garden wires and metal coat hangers, as well as polymer clay and marbles for the teeth and eye details. I decided to mount in on a piece of MDF I would jigsaw a shield shape out of.I then used a router on the edge to give a more detailed finish to the wood.

I based my design on a number of different styles from European and Asian dragons as well as what I had seen on Dan Reeder's videos and in his book. My first step was to cut out and assemble the shield as this would form the base from which I would build up the shape of the dragon to ensure a strong bond.

For the shield I added a raised section in the middle to act as the foundation for me to work off and build up the shape of the dragon's neck.Below you can see where I began to use balls of newspaper taped together to build up the shape of the neck. Once I had a rough shape to this I began coating it in layers of paper mache. I also made up a egg-like shape to form the skull separately and began coating it in layers of paper mache mix after which I left to dry for a good long while.

 Above you can see the neck section of the dragon made of paper mache. Once it had thoroughly dried I pulled out all the loose, dry layers of newspaper from the inside to give a firm, hollow shell. I then attached this to the base plate of the shield with garden wires running all the way around and covered in tape. Below is the rough skull shape I made separately in the same method. Once dried I cut into two halves resembling the jaws of the dragon and removed all the dry loose clumps of newspaper from the inside leaving to hollow halves.

 My next stage was to make the teeth for the inside of the jaws. Using polymer clay I rolled out some thin needle-like teeth. Once baked I began to fix them to the outside of the lower and upper jaw sections.

With the neck and jaws roughly assembled the next step was to begin assembling the main structure of the dragon. Using wire and hot glue I attached the lower jaw to the neck mounted on the shield. At this stage the overall look of the dragon was still pretty basic. My plan as to get the whole thing assembled before building up the final details on the surface. This made it a lot easier for me to focus on making sure the bonds between all the separate components were secure and firmly in place.

Having used paper mache to form the basic shapes I now began to build up the surface with the cloth mache technique in Dan Reeder's book. Soaking strips of an old bed sheet in PVA and water I layered up the surfaces and tried to create details were the skin of the dragon would be loose or tightly held. For example underneath the jaw and at the top of the neck I sculpted a series of wrinkle in the cloth were the scaley skin was sagging and molting like a komodo dragon. This secondary layer further strengthened  the whole structure whilst giving a more realistic finish to the dragon.

Above you can see where I had began adding detail to the front of the neck by building up layers of plates where the scales would lead down to the chest. I lined the inside of the mouth pieces with cloth mache to create the look of the inside of the mouth. Below I tried lining up the two pieces to see how they would look once attached.

I began attaching long weed-like whiskers to the bottom jaw to add to the aquatic look of the dragon, after that I painted both the insides black and began building up layers of triangular scales that would cover the majority of the neck of the dragon.

After I attached the upper jaw to the rest of the body the dragon finally began to take on its final look. At this stage with all the major components attached I could begin to build up the finer details to the surface and flesh out the facial features as well as horns and scales. As the scales on the neck were quite time consuming I tried to do a batch every so often in between sections of detail on the rest of the body.

 I began adding final details to the face, such as sculpting the eye socket and nostrils as well as adding more spines and whiskers around the top of the head. I also fixed spines running down the back in a row that would form the ridge of the spine and divide up the scales I had been placing on both sides of the neck. After fixing the marbles in place to form the eyes I built up thin layers of creased material from the corners of the bed sheet to create the eye lid and add a more realistic look to the dragon's face.

I ended up using marbles for the eyes as I couldn't get taxidermy eyes large enough, however I grew to prefer them. I think they gave a more mythical and other worldly look to the dragon rather than typical eyes. They also reflect light quite well and stood out rather than getting lost in all the facial detail.

My next step was to add the flaps of materials in between the spines on the back and corners of the mouth. Soaking layers of material in PVA and water I draped them across the rows of spines on one side, allowed to dry and then repeated the process on the other side of the spines, sandwiching the spines between the material. Once both sides were dry I used scissors and a scalpel to carve the material into crests along the back and on both sides of the mouth.

A few final embellishments I added was a couple of scales dotted around the face to avoid it looking too different from the neck section as well as strips of netted material to give the idea of scales but more in keeping with fish and marine life than reptile ones.

With construction of the dragon complete I began looking into colour schemes for the surface and what would work best on certain sections of the animal. As I was trying to convey the idea of a sea dragon I looked at a lot of turquoise tones and differing shades of blue and green.

I wanted to keep the palette quite small and avoid a broad range of colours, rather building of layers and hues rather than patches of separate colour. However, for the crest I chose a purple which still had a lot of blue in it. This would dramatically highlight sections of the dragon without looking odd. I also looked at a number of acrylics that had a shimmer or enamel like finish to then. Further presenting the idea of an animal use to an aquatic environment and give a realistic finish to the surface of the scales. These paints I would use on the top layer as the finally coat sparsely used to hint and pick up the light in certain sections.

Having undercoated the whole thing in white I began by using washes of colour to block out the sections of the dragon were colours would deepen or become brighter. I broke it up into a number of sections, mainly the gullet, scales, face, whiskers, horns and crest.

With the dragon painted I finished off the shield, removing the masking tape that had protected it and give it a block of paint before rubbing it down with sand paper to give a more aged, authentic look to the surface. Below is the finished Sea Dragon mounted on the wall. As my first attempt at a paper and cloth mache piece it was a massive learning curve during the process of designing and constructing however I was really pleased with my first attempt and learnt a lot that would come in handy when I moved on to my next one.

Viperfish Wall Art - Maquette and Plaque.

Just before Christmas I began working on my final fish piece. I wanted to base the design around the idea of a third fish maquette to display along with the other two deep sea fish (anglerfish and fangtooth fish) that I had already created to hang on the wall. I also wanted to design something with the idea of using the cut outs to make a second piece as I had come to do with the majority of my designs in this series of work. I had developed a number of different pieces so far and as I knew this would be my last for the time being I wanted to do it in both the maquette and plaque form I had been working in.

I went back to my research on marine life and looked at a number of different species. The important thing I wanted to bear in mind was that whatever I decided on had to fit in style and thematically with the other two deep sea fish but still be different and have its own defining qualities that would make it differ just enough from the previous fish. At the same time I didn't want it to be the odd one out, or be too similar to one of the previous fish, all three would have to sit alongside one another comfortably and look part of the same set, yet vary in their own unique way.

The design I came up with was based on a Viperfish. I wanted to create the idea of an animal in motion so trying to develop the way its body curved when turning and trying to replicate that in the lattice style I had been working with was a challenge. Making the three dimensional maquette would show more clearly this idea of the body curving and twisting round. However, for the flat plaque piece I would make with the cut outs it was essential the design drawn into the frame would be clear in a flat, two dimensional format as well. I worked on the spine and the fins that ran along it to achieve this idea of an animal in motion and the differing sides of its body visible.

As with previous pieces I kept the out cuts to one side as I removed them from the frame of the fish. This left me with the pieces for the plaque as well as the frame/base for the maquette to be built up from. As you can see from the image above the flat design still had to give the impression of the fish's three dimensional form in the curvature of its body.

The next step was to build up the three dimensional form of the maquette, I decided to start at the most complex section, where the spine curves around, and work from there as this would influence the rest of the sculpture. By putting in this back bone I also create the frame in which to rest all the other strips of card along as I built up the fish's body. Trying to gauge what height to build the curving spine and then determine how gradually it would slope down to the flat end of the tail and top of the spine. At first I felt I had made the gradient far too steep and this looked really odd but as I began to build up the rest of the fish it made more and more sense to have quite a high and prominent back bone. Not only did it give a stronger visual sense to the sharpness and dramatic effect with which the fish was turning, but it also looked more anatomically accurate for a fish to have quite a high ridge as they tend to be relatively flat and slimmer than they appear side on. A lower, ore rounded shape would have come across more serpent-like and ultimately inaccurate.

Below is the finished plaque piece ready for painting. These had come to be relatively simple to assemble. The hard work is cutting them out from the card, or at least the most time consuming part of the process. However, as I finish cutting them from the maquette frame the hard work starts on the three dimensional piece. So its nice at that stage to have a rewarding time simply gluing down all the pieces to form a by-product piece of art from the maquette frame. Looking back on the development of this process i can't believe I started out by discarding these pieces when I was focused only on making the maquette. At least I quickly realised the potential of getting two pieces of art from one work load and producing the opposite or negative version of the maquette frame by assembling it's jigsaw like off cuts.

My next stage for the maquette was to build up the head off the flat frame. This was the next crucial piece in gauging the volume of the fish and would make filling in the body sections much simpler and more efficient to achieve.

As with my other maquettes there was a strong influence of biological engineering, and creating the idea of a piece that looked man made but reflective of nature and the structure and repeation found in nature. To add to the rusty, metal style of the maquette I looked at varying colour schemes that would reflect the idea the fish had been bashed together out of metal, and fit in colour-wise with the other two fish I had so far created. After the vivid, rusty red of the anglerfish and the golden, tarnished brass look of the fangtooth I decided to go with a much colder, steely blue for the viperfish.

 The photo above shows the maquette over the plaque piece showing how they both line up together, being from the same piece of mount board. The picture shows the stencil I started making from the Viperfish design, I ended up doing this with all my designs to date for convience if I make any more.

Below is the finished Viperfish maquette and wall plaque. I've included a couple of close up shots of the plaque's surface detail too showing the textured surface layers in a bit more detail.