Ancient-Dragon-Art

I have always had a passion for making things. I was inspired as a kid by Jurassic Park, The Lord of the Rings movies, and a whole host of other things. I find that I get many of my ideas from the people I work with and from my environment. They don’t come up with the ideas themselves, but it’s in the things that they do that spark a chain of ideas that leads to something bigger.

How I came up with the idea for my dragons took a few months. My co-workers and I were talking about a medieval fair, and how it’d be fun to make some costumes for it. We then thought it’d be cool to make a full size dragon costume. But, that quickly was shot down as we knew it’d cost a lot and take many long hours to complete, which we didn’t have. That got me thinking of having a small dragon that could sit on my shoulder.

I went to a Hobby Lobby and spent a couple hours walking up and down the isles getting a ton of random things, most of which I never used for the dragon in the end. After about a week I had the base of the body made, to which I left it alone for another four months, not really knowing what to do. When I picked up the project again, I finally figured our how to make the legs, and the hardest part, the head. Once I had the body put together I set about cutting the scales. Each scale is cut from a 1 foot square piece of paper and then glued starting at the tail and working up. I cut the scales so small on the first one, and was so careful on making the angles perfect. In the end it took around 16 hours to place all the scales (almost 1400). Now, the scales aren’t as “neat” and it only takes 4-6 hours depending on the dragon and my will power to finish one. And while I wasn’t able to make it sit on my shoulder at the time, I was already trying to come up with new ways to make more. As of writing this I have over 90 more dragons planned, all different in some way as I want to try and not make the same dragon twice.

In the end it all comes down to what God has given me, among many other things, is a unique eye and a mind for creating things with my hands to which I give all credit for.