Welcome to the first progression post on my blog! This is a series I’ll be doing to show you a more in-depth look at how my dragons are created. First up is Godric the dragon. I’ll take you behind the scenes so you can see how he was made and learn a little more about my process.

If you follow me on my social media accounts, you know I participate in Sculptober (definitely check out the link if you don’t know what it is), but with the holiday season I had to take a break to work on gifts. Now that I’m back at it, I thought this would make the perfect candidate for our first progression post.

The theme for this sculpt was “magic wand.” Being a giant Harry Potter nerd, I had to make a little dragon holding his own little wand. I thought it’d be fun to make a house dragon instead of, say, a dragon based on a particular character. I chose Gryffindor for the most obvious reason, and I think the color combination of their house is the most striking of the four.

Prep Work

Once I had an idea, it was time to mix up the colors! I love providing a beginning shot on Instagram of the color palette I’ll be using for an upcoming project. While I can mix up colors just by experimenting, recently I’ve been using an app called ColorMixr to input palettes. It then tells me the ratio of premo (it also has a setting for fimo users) clay to use to get to that color. It’s definitely saved me a lot of time and guesswork.Tip: Even if you don’t use premo (say Sculpey III), I think this app is still helpful. I use a mix of premo and sculpey III. While the colors aren’t perfect, it still provides me with guidance.

First, I found an image that, to me, gave me a good sense of the Gryffindor color palette, and then I uploaded that photo into ColorMixr and went from there. I usually mix up a main base color (shown as the deep red color on the left) and a few accent colors for the details (a golden yellow, a bright red, and a light yellow).

Sculpting

From there, I begin building up the clay around a foil armature (not shown here) until it starts resembling a dragon. I make one end thicker and round, thin it out a little for the neck, bulk it back up for the body, and then taper it off for the tall. All of my dragons start out as flat snakes that are then built up and repositioned into shape.

The face is always where I start. It’s my favorite part to sculpt, I can’t help it. Once a base layer of clay is applied to the overall armature, I go back to the face and build it up, shaping it to have a round back end and a more square snout.

I make sure I have a nice contrasting color of clay to use as the eye, and once that’s smoothed out, I add a little dot of white for the reflection. The rest of the details are built up around the eye, starting with the eye details right around it and working my way out to the horns.

Godric remained as a snake for a little while as the legs, arms, and wings are the very last things I sculpt. Since Godric was going to be holding a wand and a little lion plush, I got to work on the plush. Getting dragons to hold things is always a little bit of a challenge for me because I either smush the tiny details, or the arms lose their shape.

Baking

I kept building up the pieces until I was happy with the way everything was proportioned. The arms took a little bit of work to get them to cooperate, but eventually Godric was ready to go into the oven! For my fellow clayers, I use a mix of premo and sculpey III, so I bake my sculptures at 275 degrees F for 30-40 minutes (especially since this sculpture also had TLS).

Once I pulled him out of the oven, I realized I wanted to give Godric a little post bake TLC, so I took a little time to sand him down in some spots to help give him a nice smooth finish. I was only able to do this because I didn’t decide to coat him in pearl ex powders. Otherwise it would have all sanded off!

Finishing

The very last step? Well that’s glazing! Everyone has their preference for how they like to finish their pieces. I really like how matte polymer clay for the most part, but I use a satin glaze to really help finish my dragons. This is especially important when I use pearl ex and paint. Certain colors are REALLY brought to life with glaze too. Black becomes a rich beautiful black when glaze is applied to it.

So this was a gloss over of how I worked through Godric. Since it was my very first progression, I talked a little more generally about the dragon making process (although there are a few things like sanding, glazing, using pearl ex powders, baking, etc.) that I want to talk about more specifically in future posts, so I didn’t want to go into too much detail here. Now we’re ready for the final reveal…

Which Hogwarts house is your favorite? Do you think these progression posts are something you’ll want to keep seeing? Let me know in the comments :)!