Final Dragon Pics

[ClayDar]

Ok all here it is,the final pics of the Guardian. The dragon presented to Joe Martin of martin Brothers Bikes. The meeting went great. He totaly freakin loved the sculpt! We did the presentaion on wednesday. I had to go back up to the shop yesturday before work because all the pics I had taken of it at home tuesday night came out waaaayyy to dark. So as promised here are the final pics of the dude painted.

http://pic14.picturetrail.com/VOL561/3685125/8357224/112183733.jpg
http://pic14.picturetrail.com/VOL561/3685125/8357224/112183753.jpg
http://pic14.picturetrail.com/VOL561/3685125/8357224/112183763.jpg
http://pic14.picturetrail.com/VOL561/3685125/8357224/112183777.jpg
http://pic14.picturetrail.com/VOL561/3685125/8357224/112183791.jpg
http://pic14.picturetrail.com/VOL561/3685125/8357224/112183689.jpg
Joe Martin seeing it done for the first time.
http://pic14.picturetrail.com/VOL561/3685125/8357224/112183937.jpg
http://pic14.picturetrail.com/VOL561/3685125/8357224/112183950.jpg
from left to right. Me (claydar) Joey (my son) Joe Martin in the middle and Jason Martin on the end in white.
I think Joe sat and stared at the sucker for 35 mins!! A coulple of the guys in the shop commented on how they need to do a bike in the same color scheme. So overall it was a fantastic meeting.

ClayDar-[/img]

[Pavel Sokov]

Wow!! great work man :D
the base is fantastic, id like to see close up shots of that.
but i think the dragon shud of had a red color scheme, since he seems to be on some sort of lava/fire base.

[ClayDar]

Thanks! Well I was originally gonna go red but Joe wanted a green dragon since he had done a bike with a green dragon paint job.

ClayDar-

[Nayana]

Nice work, it reminds me of the work of a good friend of mine who incidently hung himself last month. I was very dysapointed when he did that not only for loosing a good friend but an amazing sculptor... :upset:

I'm not trying to bring you down though, :teeth: just trying to tell you that its good to see someone else doing that kind of work so well.

[the_elder]

Whoa really kool, i agree with your decision to go with the green colour scheme, it really sets it off! great work ! Possible to do a red variant just to see what it would look like? Anyway keep it up :):)

[ClayDar]

Sorry to hear about your friend Nayana. Thanks for the compliments all. I have started on another dragon and will more then likely being going with a redish color. We'll see. You never know until the sucker comes out of the oven somthimes as to what color it is gonna be.

ClayDar-

[dreamsorcerer]

Hey mate,

I'm really impressed with your paint job, the colour scheme and the way you've applied it has come out well and truly excellent. It's like a camouflage for a forest dwelling dragon or something, was that your intention? It doesn't matter if it wasn't your intention or not, coz either way it works well.

I just had an idea for you as well, before you actually start painting your new dragon (which I'm very excited to see) you could photograph your existing dragon, open it up in Photoshop and then change the colours just to see how it would look in red. Just a thought for you? It's not advie at all, just an idea just in case you were worried about messing it up or something. But, with your skill I can't see you messing it up at all.

And by the way, If you use the inks in a certain way it actually looks mighty cool. Since they're transparent, a lot of thought goes into what colours should be used coz as you probably know it can turn out.. a bit funny. But several shades/tones of the same colour would work out. Example, from dark brown, red+brown mixed together, red on it's own, would all work in layers very well.. if you experiement on a scrap piece then you'll better understand it I think.

And I'm really happy for you for people recognising your skills and wanting to have the same paint jobs on their bikes. You'll have to show us pics of that when it happens.. Who'd ever thought of having dragon skin on a motorbike huh?

By the way, did you get the email I sent you? I sent it to you last week sometime I think. Anyway, take care man and once again.. well done.

[ClayDar]

Thanks Dreamer. I did get the pm you sent I think. Ill have to check my mail boxes but I dont remember seeing anything from you there. I'll look again. Anywho, You really saved my but on the tip about the inks being transparent. It did take a little time to plan it out but well worth it. Once I started painting it really started to take on the paint scheme on its own and I just "went with it." The original intent was to make a kool Green Dragon. So after I had my white base coat then shot the yellow on I covered the eye with clay and started with the blue and the cammo idea just sort of "came" to me. It was like a brain storm. When I started with the blue I was getting an "alien" type feel for it so then I toned it down with several different shades of greens. From there I shot all the black highlights. Turned out good for 2 days of painting and not really knowing at first what direcion to go with. It took me forever just to have the nads to shoot the first coat of paint knowing a paint job can make or break a nice piece of art. Also I couldnt decide as to go Light to Dark or Dark to light. With the inks transparent it made more sence going light to dark. As soon as I know what bike and when its gonna be painted I will try to get some pics of it. Knowing Joe though I will only be able to post any pics after it is done.
Thanks again my friend!!

ClayDar-

[EarthFairies]

Absolutely Gorgeous Claydar! I am impressed. Thank you so much for the great tutorial. Sure helped me out with my dragon. Thanks again and keep up the good work. Look forward to other piece you may work on. :confident

[GoldMane]

I rather like the emerald green version. Makes it look more mystical. Great job overall. I could have sworn it was twice as big. The base is kind of dark and hard to see in the final photos.

[ClayDar]

Yah sorry about that Gold. I really didnt get to work it near as much as I would have liked. Maybe next time Im at the shop Ill take a few pics of the base. Thanks for the compliment. I'm glad to see everyone seems to like how it ended up. Also Glad I could help you with the Tutorial Earth.

ClayDar-

[Slash]

I love the dragon! Beautiful work! I espescially like the wiskers, they are an original touch on the classic dragon.

However, being the nerd that i am, i must point out some typos. Its not that easy to see on your photo, but to me the inscription on the base reads to me either "the gaerdean" or "the gairdian". Since english in tengwar should be written after the sounds rather than letter-to-letter translated, you could (should?) get rid of that "u". (or "i" as it looks like to me..) like this: (excuse the sloppy handwriting! :P)

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b21/slashesc/theguardiantengwar.jpg <- "the gardian" ("a" as in "father")

You'll notice that i've taken away some of the lines under your vowels, because those are only used as a placeholder when there's no consonant to write them ontop of. (in cases of standalone letters, like "I am" or "A car", or with double vowels where the last one occupies the space ontop of the consonant, as is the case here.) Depending on what mode you're writing in, the vowel should be written either on the following or the previous consonant, i've written them on the following.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b21/slashesc/vowel.jpg <- as you see here, the "i" needs the line under it, because the "a" should be ontop of the "n". But if the "a" wasnt there, the "i" should have been over the "n" instead. I hope all this made sense.

as you also might notice, i've written "the" in a different way, because tolkien added some extra symbols when writing some english-to-tengwar. "the" and "of" if i recall correctly.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b21/slashesc/the.jpg


I know its a little late to nitpick on this, since you already delivered the piece. And im sure your customer will never know the difference. ;) I just thought you wanted to know in case you're gonna use tengwar on other pieces.

[TheDirtSyndicate]

hm...personally i dont like the paint job.
i love the sculpture tho, i saw it in the other thread and was blown away by it.
but i think the color job kinda killed it. not enough detail in the colors. they're just too random to me.....
you spent soooo much time on anatomy and whatnot, getting all that to look awsome, but then disregarded all that when painting.....its the same all over the whole dragon.
:(

i dunno. thats just me.
it just feels too random ....., as if you just did a crisscrossing motion over the whole thing ignoring all anatomy. and the colors themselves give me the impression that he's like really really young because they're so vibrant. he doesn't look very intimidating now.

again, thats just me.
maybe im biased....i hate the color green. haha
stil an awsome scuplt, besides, i couldn't do anything like that. im a 2d guy.
:)

[EarthFairies]

Hi Claydar, My dragon is coming along quite nicely I think? LOL

Just wanted to ask you a few questions if that is ok.

1st what airbrush paint did you use?
2nd when you added on the apoxy air dry clay did you do it after your first bake of the sculpey or can you use this clay while the polymer clay is still soft. I have never used the Aves Apoxy and just wondering. Still waiting for my order of it to arrive.

I have some really kewl Tusk Shells if anyone is interested in them, or wants more info about them. Wow, they look like real teeth or nails or spurs. I will be using them on my dragon.

Thanks again Claydar, I really appreciate your input and help.

:teeth:

[J.Willis]

From the first with the short wing span to the final, I have enjoyed watching the progress and reading the tips you've been kind enough to pass on to others. The final product looks very nice, though the molting of colors seems... I don't know aquatic-forest?

Regardless, it looks good and can't wait to see more from you.

[ClayDar]

Ok folks sorry its taken so long to get back to everyone. My computer at home decided to start freaking out due to all the viruses and other weird things going on with it.I had to wait to get to work to post replies.
Ok first to Slash,
Yes I had a feeling that the spelling of the guardian on the front was probably wrong but maybe close. I really wanted to add something differnt to this one so with my 5 minute website crash coarse that was what I went with. I could see that a lot more time would be required to get it 100 percent correct. I do want to add some maybe to future sculpts so I will keep you in mind when I do. I may be asking for correct spelling.
Complete2,
having to push the dragon to the last hours to get this one painted I really didnt have a good idea as to how I was even gonna start. All I had in mind was green :rendered: So It was kind of a work in progress from the first layer of paint. Yes it is not your typical dragon paint scheme but that was one thing that I was wanting. Green was the color that Joe Martin wanted so that was the direction that I went. The next one is going to be red if that helps :teeth:
Now to Earthferies,
I cannot wait to see what you have brewing over there!! Ok the paints that I used to airbrush were Dr.Martins acrylic inks. I liked them and they flowed pretty smooth. I had some build up on the tip that had to be cleaned a lot. The cleaning of my brush was different too due to the inks didnt clean with just water. I had to use alcohol to clean the brush. Ok enough about that. Ok about the Aves Apoxie, If you go to my pictrure trail site and skroll down to where I first started the dragon you will see that what I did was put the Aves over the wire armature. I let it dry overnight then strart covering with the Super Sculpey. You can Bake your ss then put the Aves over it and it works just fine. What I am trying to do is make as stong of an understructure that I can. You can put Aves over soft ss,BUT if the whole thing isn't completely covered,like a shell, you run the risk of a week bond in the areas that the Aves meets up to the softer more brittle super sculpey. Its kind of hard to describe,sorry. The best thing to do is use the Aves as a skeleton understructure if you want then if you are gonna add over the ss then bake it first. There are probably tons of ways to do it, that's just the best advice I could give you.
Ok now to Kentucky,
Thanks for the reply. I really enjoy getting feedback from anyone who wants to. Good or bad is ok. There millions of folks out there and everyone has an opinion and Im glad to see that some peeps enjoy the work that I do. That was one thing we did learn in art classes was how to critique and how to take them. So its all good!! :teeth: I am glad that I can give some advice on sculpting. I still have tons that I want to learn and I am happy to let others know what I learned along the way.
Thanks to All,

ClayDar-

[Slash]

Sure, just drop me a pm if you need any advice on writing tengwar. Its not everyday i get to use this knowledge, so i think its great fun to help!