ProjectArt

The Model

The crafting of the dragon began with a Christmas present. This Christmas present was a voucher that could be traded in for one paper mache dragon. The artist-parent-mother-blogcrafter was likely expecting that I would ask for a dragon a few inches long. Obviously, she assumed wrongly. As soon as I received this voucher, I grabbed a tape measure and went to measure the length of my room, an idea forming rapidly in my mind. The room measured 12 feet long and 10 feet wide so I grabbed the Draconomicon and found the length of the dragon’s head, neck, torso, tail, and wings along with its height and width and scaled them to a 7.29 scale so it would fit in the room.

Once I knew the statistics of the base dragon, I had to think of a method for construction. This is where the mother-creature came in handy, as she happened to know a form of paper mache that would have a result of being much sturdier than normal paper mache. This method involved constructing a basic skeleton out of wire, taping down wadded up paper in the appropriate shape, then layering down paper soaked in flour over the top and finally placing a layer of cloth soaked in glue over that to look like scales. Once the cloth is laid down, the dragon is painted blue then has gloss applied to it. Our chief references; Make Something Ugly… for a Change, The Definitive Guide to Papier/Cloth Mache by Seattle author Dan Reeder and Draconomicon: The Book of Dragons by Andy Collins, Skip Williams, and James Wyatt.

Daniel the Dragoncrafter

Finished with the paper mache at last! Daniel is holding some “ears” that will have webbing between them. It took a while to get the tail tied into the right position so that it wouldn’t sag under the weight of the wet paper mache.

This is the underside of the dragon, with the paper mache skin finished at last. It may not seem like much, but it was fiddly and difficult.

Here is the latest picture of the dragon. I worked on both sides on Sunday. Left to do is the upper part of the neck where the ears will go. We are working on those separately and will attach them later, and also the tail which needs to correctly positioned.

Here we are adding the newspaper strips with the flour and water to the right side and across the belly area. I didn’t feel like working much today, but I told myself “just 10 minutes - you can do anything for 10 minutes” and of course I ended up working happily away until I had used up my paste and mostly finished the side. I also broke and reset the left hind leg at a better angle.

Jane

Today I added papier mache to the body and haunch of the dragon. By working on it every day (most days) little by little it gets done. This project can’t be ignored - it is right in the middle of the living room and we all have to walk around it.

The dragon looks gaunt and bony right now. The final skin will hide some of that; but the “Make Something Ugly” technique is all about lumpy; you just have to make it work for you.

Jane

Ah, that’s more like it. You can see the muscle structure has been added over the wire skeleton. All it really needs now are some wings and some skin! The muscles are just rolls of newspaper taped up, and the legs are wire thickened with paper.

How about now? does this look more like the dragon that was shown in the first post? The head has been filled out with a blob of newspaper covered with tape, and the back has some shape now.

What is that? It doesn’t look like anything now, but it will, very soon. The spine is some heavy-gauge wire, while the ribcage is chicken wire.

Daniel is about to be devoured by the dragon! We have been working on this creature for about a week. It will be about eleven feet long, with a ten foot wingspan.