Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori Solis, and today I'm going to be sculpting a two-headed dragon that I have decided to name "Gemini" onto one of my wheel thrown bonsai pots.
The first thing I'm going to do is get some clay and work some water into it (it was a little dry). I'm going to start to form the body of the dragon. I made a single cut down the body of the dragon to set aside the clay for the heads, to make sure that the heads come out around the same size, and use the same amount of clay.
As I'm working the shape of the body and working out the shape of the tail, I'm using a piece of foam to keep the heads supported because I don't want them twisting around too much before I get to them. As I'm working out the tail, I decided that I'm going to make it a double ended tail. So the tail and the heads are both going to end in a set of two. I sculpted out these two pieces of the tail and I grafted them into the body itself.
I'm starting to shape the heads and give them sort of, a similar look, make their necks a little longer and smooth out their form the way that I want them. I want them to be brothers, they are twins, but they might not be identical twins. They are going to look very very similar, but I'm not shooting for them to be identical because that is just way too much work.
Now I'm going to see how I want them to sit on the pot, and I'm going to slip and score it onto the pot. I decided that I was going to attach the tail separately because trying to get all of it attached in one go was a lot of twisting and bending that my clay really didn't need to go through. I cut the tail off near the bottom and I'm going to re-attach it after I get the body attached. Now that the body is attached, I'm going to put the clay on the pot and smooth out the joint where the tail was disconnected from the body.
Now that I have all that on there, I'm going to start smoothing out and refining the shape of the body on the pot. After this I am going to start adding spikes, and I can't really reform the shape of the body once I start putting spikes on it, so that has to get done first. I'm also removing a lot of excess slip that came out from the joint.
I start shaping the necks. I want them to stop falling over so I'm going to start giving them some more of their base form so they can find their own center of gravity.
Now I'm going to add spikes to the tail end. I'm working on these delicate parts first.. but then I just decided to get some wet paper towels because this is going to take a long time and I don't need those delicate parts drying out. I covered the bottom half in wet paper towel while I start to sculpt in the teeth. Teeth and spikes always take a super long time. I always tell myself that I'm not going to do it this time because it just takes too long, then I decide that it just looks too cool not to make the spikes. They are impossibly fragile.
I want the dragons here to have similar teeth, so I'm making them about the same size, shape and placement. Like I said, we are going for brothers. I'm just adding in the teeth and finishing up the upper jaw. Once the upper jaw is done, I'm going to sculpt out the shape of the bottom jaw and add the teeth in, add the tongue in.
For this series, I'm doing a coat of underglaze on my wet clay for the tongue and teeth to try to add some color to that because it's impossible to add paint to the inside of the mouth after I've attached the jaw to the head. So that's an experiment that's ongoing. I haven't fired anything from this collection yet to see if it's going to work or not. So it's still experimental, but I have high hopes for it, and a couple other ideas for if it doesn't work. Maybe applying it thicker, we will cross that bridge when we get to it.
I've got the first jaw done and I'm almost done with the second jaw. Just attaching it and refining the jaw shapes. Once I get the jaws done, it will be time to work on their head gear. They're going to have two nice spikes coming off the top of their heads, starting with this one. I want the head spikes to be longer, kind of pulled back. I didn't want them to look too mean, since this one's name is Gemini, I was kind of hoping they would look more curious than anything. Like one's looking over and the other one's looking over like, "yeah man, what is that?, what's that?"
Now we are into the process that is spikes. I have sped this up extra. I sped this segment up to 65x speed so we can get through it. It takes a very long time to put all of these spikes on. Each one is sculpted with my fingers and then slipped, scored and attached to the body. I might be over-killing it with slipping and scoring it since the clays are the same amount of wetness, but I really want to make sure that they are as attached as possible; because they are so impossibly fragile. They break of so easily. Even after they are fired they are very very fragile.
If you'd like to see this process in 1.35x speed instead of 65x speed, you can find extended cuts to all of my sculpting and process videos on my Patreon at patreon.com/bluenosetrading. Extended cuts are exclusive to patrons. Mostly right now I am doing sculpture and some painting videos. If you're a patron and you'd like to see other parts of my process in real time speed, just let me know and I will make those for you. But right now, I have a lot of sculpture process videos in real time speed. Several hours long, so you can see all the nuances and details of what I'm doing as I'm working.
I'm giving them a back leg here. This one back leg is going to have feet and everything attached to it where it is grabbing at the pot, but the other one is kind of tucked up under their body, so you can really only see the hip. Now that I've got their legs attached, I'm going to continue on my mission of attaching spikes all the way down their body, all the way down their tail, both their tails.
This dragon was like sculpting two dragons. Which I think that makes sense when you look at it, but the amount of time that it took... I knew what it was going to take, and I was ready for it, but, it's still impressive when I watch it. Even at 65x speed, I'm like, "wow, that took a while to get done". But it was totally worth it. I really love how they turned out.
I'm still just attaching spikes. They are getting smaller as they go down their back. So that saves me, uhm, no time at all actually because there's less space between the smaller ones and I have to make more of them. I ended up adding another spike to the end of their tail. I think I finally got all the spikes finished.
Now I'm going to go through and do some nit-picking and shaping. Add some details to their face. Sculpt out some of the details in their jaws and their body. Details, nit-picking...
Then I'm going to add this slip all down their backside, being extra careful to get on the underside too. The slip is going to give them a pattern that I feel resembles scales. Once I glaze it, it should look really nice depending on how it hold the glaze. I love the texture. I'm just going in-between, using the slip to secure spikes where they need to be secured. I'm going to carve out a little more of their body, do some various nit-picking...
They are all done. So if you think they turned out pretty awesome, go ahead and give this video a thumbs up. If you'd like to see a weekly art video, you can subscribe to this channel, Blue Nose Trading. For extended cuts and early releases to all the YouTube videos, you can become a patron of my work at patreon.com/bluenosetrading and I will see you guys, next week!
SHOPPING LINKS
Purchasing using my affiliate links helps support and bring income to my channel.
►Shimpo Banding Wheel 7" (size in this video):: https://amzn.to/3BjXBqE
►Carving Tools:: https://amzn.to/3Eb8b4J
►Silicone Work Mat:: https://amzn.to/3k2ASsL
Comments