Dragon Bust Sculpture

I sculpted this over two years ago, and it ended up sitting on my dining room table--unfinished--until a couple weeks ago. (I'm still surprised it managed to live that long without getting broken, especially since it can't stand on its own.) Anyway, it's meant to hang on the wall so it looks like there's a dragon coming through. I haven't found a place to put it yet, though, since it needs a good, strong support given how insanely heavy it is. I really hope, wherever he goes, he stays up on the wall for a decent period of time before falling (because, well, it's inevitable that part of the mounting will give way eventually).

He has a sort of dirty/aged look because he's supposed to be an old male dragon who's seen his fair share of battles but can still woo the ladies with his bright, colorful crest and spines.

I started with a wire skeleton, covered with foil, and plastered about nine pounds of Sculpey over the top of that. After baking it in the oven (it barely fit!), I sealed it with Gesso and painted it in acrylics. The horns are real Nyala horns I bought from *Zhon (whom you should check out). They're not symmetrical because they're two right horns instead of a right and a left. But hey, nothing in nature is perfectly symmetrical.... Oh, and the eyes are generic glass taxidermy cat eyes.

The only thing I don't like about this is that he's very much not symmetrical. The bottom jaw is offset from the top, and the eyes are not at the same place on each side of the head (giving him a DERP look when viewed head-on). Still, this is a pretty big accomplishment for me. It's the largest sculpture I've ever done, I used several new techniques in both sculpting and painting, and it managed to turn out fairly well (i.e., the colors don't totally suck!).

From nose to nape, he's 17 inches (43 cm), and the span of his horns is 22 inches (56 cm).