By: KATIE WILLIAMS
Staff Writer
So for advanced 3D art, our first art project to start off the year was to make a dragon sculpture, honestly, it was challenging but fun. The very first thing we did was sketch out our dragons. We had to draw 4 dragons with the side profile and the back. After we were done sketching we colored in the one we wanted to do. And then we got to start working on the actual dragon.
The whole process of it all was hard because for the first part of the project all we used was newspaper and masking tape. What we had done first was make the head of the dragon and as well as the neck. Then we got to everyone’s favorite part of 3D art, and that’s paper mache, paper mache is gross, slimy, and overall just icky. We had to switch from liquid starch and water to Elmer’s glue and water. The liquid starch was stronger than the glue, it had hardened the giant ball of newspaper better than Elmer’s glue. So once we had finished paper macheting everything, we had cut open the headpiece into 2 pieces so the mouth of the dragon could be opened, and with the neckpiece, we had to construct all 3 pieces together with tape, so it could form the actual neck and head of the dragon. And yet again, we used paper mache to hide the tape.
Next were the fine details of the dragon; which were the eyes, nose, teeth, and any scaly texture we had wanted. Since my dragon was dead because that was my favorite sketch that I had done, I did little rotting spots and tearing for my texture. The hardest part of the facial features was definitely the eyes, the eyes I had done were getting a little complicated because they were slanted and had pointed ends. I cut the one I had done first because I couldn’t match it on the opposite side and I thought it would be easier if I did both eyes at the same time. The nose was fairly simple, it was odd how I did it because I folded newspaper and kinda created this piece that had the depth to give the dragon a nostril. The teeth were fairly simple, I used cardboard to create the teeth and just hot glued them in the mouth. Also to note, the dragon had to have a tongue but since mine was dead I took the creative liberty of not doing a tongue. And the unique detail my dragon has is that it has fins. Wire, tape, and newspaper were used to create the fin shape,
And the final part of making the dragon was painting it and assembling it to a thick piece of wood. Painting is my favorite part of any art project, painting gives it a deeper detail than actually constructing the piece. I made sure mine only had color in the fins because it would make it stand out a little more and also having color is just fun and I wanted to challenge myself to do an ombre on my dragon. I used light neutrals and yellows to create shadows and give them detail in the rotting spots and tears. I used a different color for the tears in the fins, it was a gray shade mixed in with the colors used to paint the fins. For the eyes, we had used marbles and I decided to paint them a light blue to show the disappearance of life for the most part in the dragon. The last final touches that weren’t painted are that I created vines with flowers on them out of green floral wire and fake flowers, it gave it more color and shows that the dragon has been on the ground and becoming one with nature around it.
My review for the dragon head is a 9.8/10. I dislike paper mache because it can be hard and it took me like 1 ½ years to actually do it nicely and create a smooth paper mache. It was a little challenging and I had started over a couple times with certain aspects of it like the neck, I didn’t like the shape so I redid it. Having to sketch out 4 dragons wasn’t fun, I had never drawn dragons before and it was hard. My decaying dragon was obviously my favorite and it came out exactly how I had expected it to.
