She Sells Sea Dragons by the Sea Shore

Hello Art Fans!
Working super hard to get my Gallery inventory up by the Dragon Con Art Show in September. Ugh it is almost here! I somehow run out of time every year, I think the universe shortens the year in July just so I don't get my "to-do" list done...IT'S A CONSPIRACY I TELLS YA!!!
But I did get a fun sculpture finished this week and I am super excited about how it turned out. I'll admit, this piece had me worried for a minute. it was going the complete opposite direction than I had envisioned in my head so I wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull it off, but it seems I know nothing. Let me walk you through my process of making my first Sea Dragon.
Every artist has mess-ups and mistakes when creating a piece. This piece decided to give me grief right off the bat. The frame I had planned to use for this sculpture originally, completely melted in my oven. I was super annoyed because I had spent several days embellishing it. But now I know to make sure a frame is actually wood instead of hard plastic. Live and learn...a lot. Each set-back teaches you something.
The new frame was around three inches taller than the last, so now my sculpture was going to be larger than I had expected but the Art must go on!
As always, I begin by forming the general shape with polymer clay around aluminum foil, loosely packed. The aluminum center helps to cut back on how much clay you use and how long you have to bake a piece.

I wanted my Sea Dragon to sort of resemble a seahorse. So I gave it a long thin jaw/snout and a curving shape to it's neck. Pressing yellow/orange glass beads into the clay for my dragon's eyes.

I poke holes in my sculpture where I need to attach the fins/wire before baking,
because it is very difficult to poke the holes after baking. 

Then I bake my piece for only about 10 minutes. I don't want to cook it for too long because I will bake my sculpture multiple times.
I hold my piece up to the frame several times during the sculpting to make sure it is the right size and shape for the selected frame.

The back of the frame is completely sculpted from polymer clay.
It makes it easier to attach my sculpture to the base.

Now lets make some fins. I sculpt each fin around a wire to keep them a nice straight shape and to have an anchor to attach the fins to my sculpture. The fins are then baked for 5-10 minutes.

Then I place the fins in my piece to make sure I have it the way I want. I ended up not having enough that were the correct size and had to make more fins. 

Normally I like to use colored polymer clay to add different shades to my sculptures but I didn't think I would be able to get the right look using only clay so the fins got hand painted stripes. I mixed colored powder with Liquid Sculpey so my paint could be baked without burning.  

Time to make the background on the frame. I don't like my framed pieces looking like mounted heads, to avoid this look, I give each frame a small background. I think it makes the frame feel more like a window my piece is coming through. I painted the background shades of blue and then sculpted right on the paint. I winded the Sea Dragon's long body back and forth to get the look of a serpent swimming. Then added small scales one by one.

And I added some seaweed to complete the look.
My frame was not feeling as oceany(oceany is a word :P) as I wanted so I felt little barnacles and shells where needed.

The small bubbles are made of resin and I added them after the piece was completely baked.

After the background is finished, I attach my dragon to the frame. Using craft wire that goes from the torso into the frame and mounds of liquid Sculpey, which works like glue you can bake.

Here comes the super-duper time-consuming part of our sculpture. Adding all the scales and facial details, Whew this takes a bit. I roll out tiny balls of clay and lay them one at a time on the torso. Smoothing each one out with my flat wooden tool before adding the next scale. Just to do the torso and neck scales took me around 15 hours.

While I am laying the scales, I am adding stripes to his body. Cause nothing is more oceany than stripes! :D Again I use colored powder mixed with liquid Sculpey to make the paint. 

Lets add belly scales now! These don't take as long because they are much larger scales. I flatten out yellow clay and highlight it with blue. Then each piece is layered on the belly. I tried to layer the scales in a way to make the scales look like coral. 

Small light blue scales were added to his lower jaw. These were spaced out a bit instead of over-lapped so it would appear more like cracked skin than scales.

Our dragon's neck and face are all that is left. The scales get smaller as I work my way to his snout. Then the scales across his nose are long and flat. I cover small wire with clay and roll it out as thin as possible, this makes perfect whiskers for my Sea Dragon. The rest of his head fins are attached and side fins are baked and attached to his torso. Looking pretty awesome if I do say so myself. :) 

All that is left now is to add small painted details to the clay. I paint the entire piece with acrylics and then wipe the excess away while it is still wet. The paint seeps into the small nooks and crannies and makes the whole sculpture pop. Then I added tiny dots to the length of my dragon, like the ones on seahorses. :)

When all was said and done, this sculpture took me over 100 hours and I used approximately 12 ounces of polymer clay. He is 10 inches in size and weighs about two pounds, which is heavy for my work. 

By Far the most difficult and in-depth sculpture I have done lately. 

I have named this guy Shorr (shore) and he will be available in my Gallery at the Dragon Con Art Show in September. I hope everyone has enjoyed following my process and I hope you can all stop by to see this piece. 

Keep checking my blog and social media sites for updates on what I will have available at Dragon Con. 

Thank you much for reading!

~Caralyn 

Con Sketches!

Over the past 10 years I have vended at many Conventions. Cons can be super long weekends and are extremely exhausting. But when I am not chatting up customers, having crazy geek conversations or making new con buddies, I need a way to past the time. A great way to deal with the few down times of a convention is to do CON SKETCHES!!! Creative individuals ask for special custom artwork and I am more than happy to oblige. And it never fails to surprise me how imaginative people can be with some of the sketches they request.

Farscape and Dragon Pals

Foxy tea time

Dragon Con Dragon Pal

Firefly Dragon (Dragonfly) :D 

Nick the Fox

CrisCross Bat

Gwenpool Banana Phone

Gwenpool Mary poppins

There are plenty more sketches that I haven't posted and there are many more sketches to be sketched. So if you see me at a Convention, feel free to walk right up and ask for a Con Sketch...I'm probably not really doing anything anyway. LOL :)

Can't think of a sketch you would like? No problem, check out my Etsy store for some fun prints.

Thanks for reading Everyone!

~Caralyn 

How to Make your Forest Dragon

Working on my second framed Dragon. My first Dragon was "Kuu" the Moon Dragon. Had so much fun creating him, I thought I would do another one for the Dragon Con Art Show this year. But I couldn't just do the same type of Dragon, I wanted something new and challenging. How about a Forest/Tree Dragon, it was certainly challenging enough for me.
I started by sculpting a general shape out of polymer clay. This sculpture will be framed so I only need to make the head, neck and shoulders. I wanted the piece to look more like the Dragon was poking his head through a window and not like a mounted head.
Glass bead eyes are placed into the head and details are sculpted into the clay. The sculpture is starting to look more like a dragon now. Using a pointed tool and a rubber tipped tool, I give my dragon a mouth where I can place his small teeth and then sculpt some nostrils.

I know I want this dragon's body to be covered in leaf like scales so I begin with the background, where I want his body to appear to be coming from. I make some polymer clay canes (a rod of polymer clay consisting of two or more colors that form an image). I cut pieces from the canes and form each piece into a leaf shape.

Next I make a clay back on my frame and then start laying the leaves one at a time. This is a time consuming process that will cover my entire sculpture.

The dragon is attached to the frame back with craft wire and liquid Sculpey, a useful materiel for any sculptor. It works like glue you can bake.

I didn't want my forest dragon to just be green leaves, he needed a bit of contrast. So I started working on little roots that would go in and out along his neck and eventually sprout out the top of the dragons head like a tree top.

After the roots were all sculpted, I began incorporating each one into the leaves and along his neck. I even added a few to his throat and under his chin.

The roots in place, I started on the chest scale leaves of my piece. I made these leaves a bit lighter in color and much larger.

Before I got too far, I took a moment to start adding the branches to my dragon's head.

I wanted his crown of branches to look a specific way, so I took my time placing each one and rearranging them to get the right look.

Once the head pieces were where I wanted, I resumed adding the leaf scales until I had the neck completely covered.
Time to work on the face of my sculpture. The cheek and mouth scales needed to be much smaller than any I had done previously so not to overwhelm the facial features.

My Forest Dragon just needed some paint on himself and his frame to make him complete.

Here he stands in all his glory..or hangs on your wall in all his glory.
I hope you enjoyed this step by step blog, this piece will be available at the Dragon Con Art Show in September. :)

Thanks for reading.
~Caralyn