Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. My name it Tori Solis and today I'm going to be going over the full process in making this aquatic dragon. I'm also going to be talking about some of the ideas and considerations artistically that I went through while I was creating this dragon.
I start my sculptures with a wheel thrown pot as the base. My typical design is a pot intended to be a bonsai planter. They are shallow, straight-sided pots. They are also great for different kinds of succulents and cactus, or whatever you want to plant in a shallow planter pot.
This pot has already been trimmed and the drainage holes are already set in. I use a variety of holes in these pots, not only for the additional drainage, but also to provide holes for wiring trees into the pots, if you are using this pot for a bonsai.
I keep pots that are ready to be sculpted on in my damp box, so that I can pull them out and work on sculptures as I have time for it. If you'd like to learn how to make a damp box, I'll go ahead and link to that video. They're super helpful for anyone who's working in sculpture, because sometimes you just don't have the time to do it all in one sitting. It's great that I can keep clay wet and ready for when I'm ready and have time to get to things.
I'm going to hand build this dragon. The dragon I'm making today is inspired by aquatic dragons. In making this design, I tried to keep what I know about aquatic animals, in general, in mind. This dragon is actually very much like a Spinosaurus. I call it a "dragon" and not a "dinosaur" because I'm working loosely with some creative freedom, rather than in an exacting scientific approach that would be an accurate representation of what current science recognizes as the Spinosaurus species should look like, based off of all of our current information.
Something that I find particularly interesting where dragons, lore and legend is concerned is the role that fossils and dinosaurs have played into the legends that we know of. In this day and age, we think of dinosaurs and dragons as totally different things. Dinosaurs are very real and we have a lot of scientific evidence to study them through their bones, whereas dragons are stuff that was made up to scare people from going to places that they shouldn't. When humans would uncover fossils way back in a time before modern technology and science could determine that those bone actually belonged to these extinct, prehistoric animals, they came to their own conclusions.
Fossils and dinosaur bones helped to stir the imaginations and create the mythical legends of dragons. If you try hard, and you put yourself into the shoes of someone from back before the enlightenment and the scientific revolution, it isn't super hard to see how they came to their conclusions. Dinosaur bones are huge, and without any basis for scientific explanation, they can be quite frightening. It's not a super big leap for them to say "these things might still be around", because they had no idea of knowing what was extinct. A lot of the map was still unexplored, so far all they knew, dragons could have been out there. Now we know better, but it's super interesting to me, the concepts and ideas that they came up with for these creatures based off of bones alone without any of the modern technology that we have today.
Today with our modern science that rapidly expands our knowledge every day, we're developing more and more accurate ideas of what these dinosaurs most likely looked like. They've got tons of different ways that they are doing this. It's a whole field and you should definitely look into because it is absolutely fascinating stuff to me.
Science aside, in my creative work, I like to take a more open and creative approach. I like to tap into that old imagination approach that pre-dates modernity. What if there were fantastical monsters? What would my mind conjure them to look like? What are some creative different ideas in my mind that come to me when I'm thinking of ways to design these creatures?
It's impossible for me to answer these questions free from both my biases and knowledge on the dragons of old that people have made up, and legends, and the dinosaurs that we have know, and the scientific information for how those dinosaurs lived and functioned. When I'm creating a dragon, I like to pull from both of these pools of information to create something entirely new.
I love it when dragons have fierce, strong and bold expressions. A lot of this comes from European dragons, at least my inspiration for the bold, strong expressions, is from the European dragons. But I also like it when dragons have really really long bodies, and this is more like the Asian dragons legends. Which interestingly enough, they think that China and Europe both independently came up with the concepts of dragons on their own, which is pretty neat.
I like to also take in some practical, more scientific considerations when I'm creating a sculpture as well. The dragon that I'm making today, for example, is going to be one that lives an aquatic and amphibious lifestyle. So it makes sense to me that he would have webbed feet for swimming. I also designed his tail as a sort of paddle shape that would be good for swimming. As an aquatic carnivore, I imagine this dragon would be eating fish. So he would have long, sharp, conical teeth that are really great for catching and holding onto those slippery fish. The large sail on his back could play a role in swimming, or maybe it just makes him extra attractive to mates, or extra intimidating to rivals or other large predators.
When choosing the colors for this dragon, I first tried to imagine where I thought this creature would live. In my mind, I envisioned him stalking through the swampy flooded grasslands like the Florida Everglades. I don't know if you guys have ever been to the Florida Everglades, but it's enough to inspire anyone's imagination. They already have a ton of alligators, so it's kind of like they have their own dragons already. But this one would be way bigger.
With this in mind, I wanted him to have a swampy green and brown pallet with some lighter, countershading that's typical to a lot of different aquatic animals and predators. For a mottled camouflaged pattern, I laid down a layer of black Mayco Fundamentals Underglaze across his backside. Over that underglaze design that I created, I put a thick coat of a this semi-translucent patina green glaze. His teeth and his eyes are both done in Mayco Stroke and Coats, because I wanted them to be sort of glossy. His tongue is done in Mayco Fundamentals without any glaze over it, so the tongue will be red, but not glossy. For some additional razzle dazzle, I put a line of gold metallic down the edge of his sail, and his tail.
I haven't ever put gold metallic and patina green together, so I'm just kind of hoping that they are going to play nice together. Experimenting on dragons maybe isn't the best idea, but here we are, and we are doing it.
I made this sculpture out of Laguna Speckled Buff clay. I did an entire series on this clay if you'd like to learn a little bit more about what it's like to work with this clay, I'll go ahead and link that video for you. It's a warm, honey colored clay that has a lot of tiny little flecks in it that look a lot like ground black pepper to me.
I've decided to leave both the pot and his underbelly without and glaze on it. I'm hoping that this is going to give him a bit of a countershading effect. Countershading is a common method of camouflage where the backside is darker than the underside. This helps animals hide, that are in the water especially, and especially even birds that fly in the sky. Because the sun is shining from above. So if you're looking down on something, you're going to see darkness, and you're going to see the backside that's darker, it's going to blend in really well. But if you're looking at it from below, and you're looking up, and you're looking into the sun, everything's going to be a lot lighter. So the lighter underbelly and the darker backside help him to camouflage regardless of which direction that you are looking at him from.
All that's left is to pop him into the kiln for his final firing, and pray to the kiln gods that they smile favorable upon him. It's always super nerve racking for me to fire dragons. I have a ton of dragons that I need to glaze and fire. Usually they just end up as bisque stacked up because I just, I'm too anxious to glaze and fire them. But for this one I committed to getting him done. So we are going to glaze him and see how he turned out.
Wow! Wow, wow, wow! He is amazing. I've decided to name him "Vostok" after both the Steve Alten book, and the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica, which is what that book is named after. It's a really fantastic book. If you haven't read any Steve Alten novels, they are awesome. MEG and The Loch, and my favorite series from him, and I highly recommend that you read them. They are fantastic aquatic sci-fi. They are just some of my favorite books.
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Remember to drink water, hug your friends, and share all of your amazing ideas with the world because we need them. I will see you guys next week.
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