I feel like I was just writing the previous Pure Art Collab recap. It’s amazing how time flies when it comes to this collab. The event itself seems to fly by, and the time in between is even faster!
A Mother of Dragon Eggs and I were really excited to bring this theme forward during July to pay tribute to Harry Potter’s birthday. I’m a huge Harry Potter nerd. I read the first book when I was in first grade, and it is the series that brought me into the world of reading. I remember it was always a fight for me before that. I’m sure that’s not tooooooooo far off for a first grader, but still…I remember the profound change this series had on me and my relationship with reading.
With that said, however, we also wanted to put a little spin on it. I’m sure we are not done with the Harry Potter fandom, but with our themes needing to break up nicely into groups of 4 for our collab group, we thought the Hogwarts houses (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin) would be a fun way to start out.
We could tell you guys were excited too! We received submissions before Gryffindor even officially began! And Ravenclaw really brought a wonderful variety in submissions. Our little Instagram community is continuously growing, and I can’t wait to see what this means for the future of the collab. We hit 500 followers during this theme, and that is super exciting considering we just started the account at the end of April!
Thank you so much to the people who participated in the themes and submitted their creations for a feature. Your content and creativity help inspire others to do the same. I know you inspire me!
Before I break out my thought process behind each theme, I want to take a moment to talk about the series I created with the Hogwarts houses theme. I first did a dragon interpretation of Gryffindor in January 2017 as part of my Sculptober series. The prompt I was using was magic wand, and I thought it’d be fun to pull from the Harry Potter universe. I even named him Godric after the house founder :).
He is of course holding a wand, but I also wanted to give him a cute little plush lion.
I never revisited the other houses since I was working my way through more Sculptober themes at the time, but Godric was my inspiration for this series. I wanted to revisit it and experiment with some super cute cuddling dragons with plush animals! Each color palette was dropped to the 2 house colors, with the secondary color being either metallic or sparkly in some way.
I also used photos of sleeping kittens as inspiration for the poses. I’ll leave those with their dragon below!
Theme 1: Gryffindor
The house known for its bravery. This little guy is fashioned in Gryffindor’s classic deep red and gold colors. He is sleeping on his hand in a slightly curled up position on his side, his little lion plush snuggled up tight in front of his body.
I liked remaking this dragon so I could make my color scheme more accurate and improve my lion plush. I think they both turned out super adorable!
And here’s the sweet kitten I was inspired by:
Theme 2: Hufflepuff
For this next theme, I put up a poll in my Facebook group and let the members decide which kitten pose would be the next inspiration. I think there were a few votes that came in after I mentally cut off the voting, so the winner was this little guy:
I had to loosen the pose up a bit to allow room for the badger plush (and I didn’t want to risk squishing my dragon or the plush). She is also laying on her side, more with her head tucked into her body. Her appendages are curled up into her much more than Gryffindor, and she’s pulled her plush up on top of her face. The badger was sculpted in a dark brown and painted in white in the face.
Overall, I think this ended up being a very sweet pose, one that I could definitely see myself revisiting for future dragons!
By the way, Hufflepuff is my house! When I was first sorted, I was a little disappointed because I wanted to be in Gryffindor like the main trio, but I’ve come to embrace it and feel as if it’s pretty fitting for me :).
Theme 3: Ravenclaw
Since I had 5 photos of inspiration and only 4 poses, I was going to poll out the inspiration to my Facebook group with both Ravenclaw and Slytherin, as it was fun to see what poses you were drawn to. For Ravenclaw, this little one won:
After baking my dragon, however, I realized I ended up posing more like one of the other inspirational poses, so instead of doing another poll for Slytherin, I was going to use that opportunity to correct my “mistake” (see below).
I think I’m the most drawn toward the Ravenclaw palette. Something about that deep blue and bronze color is just really pretty. Also, bronze is a weird color to try and mix up. I hope I did it justice!
This little dragon was sculpted on her side cuddling the plush. She’s holding her little eagle plushy in front of her face and is curled around it. I made it a dark brown color because that’s always how I saw the bird in the crest.
Theme 4: Slytherin
Going back to the pose I should have used for Ravenclaw, I set out to create a dragon who was resting his head on his little plushy.
I didn’t think I’d like this color palette as much as I did. While I hate how the glitter in the silver clay gets EVERYWHERE ELSE no matter how well I clean my hands, I still appreciate the contrast between this dark green and bright silver.
His little plush is of course a snake. I created a black snake coiled up and looking up, tucked underneath the chin of the dragon. I was tempted to make red eyes for the snake, but decided to go with silver to tie into the dragon.
At the end of the day, I’m rather pleased with this set of dragons, and I love seeing them all next to each other. J. K. Rowling picked a very strong suite of colors for the Hogwarts houses, as they are rather satisfying to look at.
To celebrate the end of another Pure Art Collab theme, these dragons will be up in my shop this weekend. Check out my Etsy shop at 1 p.m. PST on Saturday, August 18 to snag one of these one-of-a-kind Hogwarts house dragons!