Oct 1, 20217 min read

Dragon Bonsai Sculpture Process | Learning Pottery Vlog | Ep 11

Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. Today I am going to be hand sculpting a dragon onto the side of this bonsai pot, so let's get to it.

Well the first thing I want to do here is I want to grab my clay and I'm going to go ahead and pull out some to make a slab with and I'm going to set aside some to make the body of the dragon with. I'm going to go ahead and roll out this slab and I'm going to make sure that I pop all the bubbles as I go. I'm going to get this slab rolled out nice and smooth. Flip it over, so that's nice and even, smooth it out.

Then I'm going to get my banding wheel and go ahead and start forming the main body of the dragon itself. So I'm just going to roll it out, make sure that I'm smoothing cracks as I go. Keep it nice and smooth. I want it to taper a little bit so that his tail is thinner than the top of his body. I kind of have a preliminary shape for his head. I'm going to go ahead and slip and score where he touches the pot. His head's kind of falling down a little bit, so just going to kind of mess with that, give it a little more strength.

Attaching appendages to this dragon, so that it is a dragon and not a snake. He's going to have little arms and legs holding onto the side of the pot. So I'm just kind of putting on the rough shapes for those right now, and then I'm going to go ahead and sculpt them out in greater detail. I also found a use for this makeup sponge. It turns out it's a perfect prop to hold his head up because the weight of it and the softness of the clay at the moment was kind of causing it to fall. So it's propped up with that nice, handy-dandy little sponge, so that it can stiffen up a little bit to support it's own weight.

Right now it's just a matter of painstakingly sculpting little fingers and attaching them to the hands so that he can have awesome little claws and hold onto the side of this pot. Keep him up there all safe. I decided to go ahead and give this dragon four fingers. He's got three main fingers and a little thumb like appendage. I'm sculpting these in and I'm also re-refining the shapes of his hips and his shoulders. Ensuring that they blend into the body the way that I want them to. So just a lot of refining. Sculpting out the toes. I do want these to be nice and sharp like little claws.

I'm also going to go ahead and I'm going to draw a line around his back to kind of score out where I want the spikes down his back to go. Kind of determine what angle he is holding onto this pot, and pressing his body against it. Distinguish his stomach from his back. Then just keep refining and sculpting these tiny little toes. I really like this sculpting tool, it's really nice for getting those tiny little pieces to blend into the clay really smooth, and compress that clay down really nice.

Now that he is a little more dry, I'm cleaning up some of the slip from the crease where he's been attached to the pot. Just good craftsmanship, I don't really want it to be messy and have a lot of that slip left.

I'm going to put some refining features into his face. He is going to have more of a European face. His body is long and inspired by Japanese dragons, but his face is going to be a little more fierce and intimidating. It has a lot more inspiration coming from European dragons. So I'm sculpting a bottom jaw, and I'm also giving him teeth. Which, is incredibly difficult. I would say that giving him teeth was the most difficult part of this entire sculpture, and I'm honestly not sure if these teeth are going to hold up during firing because they are so delicate. I've tried to slip and score, blend them into the clay, and sculpt them while everything is all wet. But they are so tiny that they are drying out incredibly fast, and they are just incredibly breakable. So we will honestly see. I'll probably update the bisque firing with a short, and we will see from there how he did. I'm pretty sure if anything is going to break it's going to be his spines or his teeth. So, I'm just refining these teeth, just really getting in there and smoothing them out, making sure that they are well attached. I'm periodically placing the lower jaw around the upper jaw to kind of see how the teeth are fitting together. They fit pretty good.

Now that I've got it how I want it, I'm going to go ahead and blend this upper jaw into his skull so that it's smooth and connected really well, and has a nice jaw shape that's not too overwhelming. Because just putting it on there raw is pretty overwhelming. So lots of nit-picking. Throw some details into his face, give him some nostrils and carve out some eye.

I'm going to roll a piece of my slab a lot thinner because I want to go ahead and put some sort of wings, or winged design off the top of his head. Once I've shaped one with my hands, and get it just how I want it, I'm gong to lay it down on the slab and cut out a matching one. We don't need to re-invent the wheel twice. I'm going to smooth out all the rough edges on these, then I'm going to slip and score them to the top of his head where I want them. Then I'm going to roll some tiny little pieces of clay to smooth in, give these a nice smooth connection to the top of his head on both sides. I'm working really carefully and using very tiny tools here because it's such a delicate piece. He is a delicate dragon in general.

So, I think I've got those how I want them. Just do a little more refining. Of course, coming back to this mouth because it's going to need constant refinement to make sure these teeth are exactly how I want them. There's a very short window where I can reshape and move the teeth around, and that window is closing quickly.

Now I'm going to put spikes down the entire backside of the dragon. This wasn't the most difficult part, but it definitely took the most time. I had to go ahead and put this part in super fast motion because, yeah, making each of these little spikes and then slipping, scoring and blending them into his backside. I'm following the line that I drew previously, where I determined how his spikes were going to go on. So they have a nice movement and flow across the back of him. So we're just putting them all the way around. They are going to go all the way down his back and down to his tail. On his tail he is going to have some big spikes.

These are incredibly delicate. If you just touch one they just fall off. I would say that this is going to be a sculptural piece for me, and maybe in some later designs I might find a way to make them a little stronger. But I really love the way that they look. So for now, this is pretty awesome, but incredibly fragile and delicate. Definitely not possible to put in the hands of any kind of mailing service and expect it to get there without loosing a spike or two, and that would just be sad. Honestly, he could loose some spikes in the kiln so we really just have to see how he turns out. I understand that this is incredibly delicate and, let's say, ambitious to try to make him this delicate, with these tiny little parts connected.

This is seriously the fastest part of the video and it still, putting these spikes on is such a process. Almost done. We are right here at the end of his tail. Now his spikes do taper. So as they get closer to his tail they get shorter, smaller and they kind of bend in. Now I'm just going to work on these final spikes for the end of his tail. Nice.

Now I'm going to go around and smooth out anywhere where I nicked this with my fingernails, as that does happen when you're working. But we don't leave those mistakes on the work. So I smooth those out and refine any areas that have extra slip from where he was connected to the pot itself, and go ahead and smooth those out, clean that up. Then I'm going to add this texture to him that, it's kind of a texture that I'm sure someone else has done it, but I made it up independently and it's like slipping his back and then using the slip to create a texture that's a lot like scales. I'm going to put some on his head and the tips of his wings and hopefully, if he makes it to glazing, when the glaze lays on top of that it will create a really nice texture that looks a lot like scales. So he is just about done, and there he is.

Go ahead and give this video a thumbs up if you thought it was interesting, and if you'd like to see a weekly art video you can subscribe to my channel at Blue Nose Trading, and I will see you next week with a new video. Thanks guys!