Prepping for an Art Walk Part 2

I’m just under one month out from the first art walk. I wrapped up the dragons last week; all that’s left is to sign and glaze the bottoms.

These were all creations drawn from last year’s Sculptober themes (because I’m slow and still working through them in April 2017; you’ll be pleased to know I’m just about done). Right now I’m ahead of schedule, which is what I was hoping for.

The last blog was all about how I prep for art walks. Now I’m in the middle of it all. I’m filling in the gaps to my ideas list ahead of time so I can just keep chugging along.

Lately, I’ve found myself staggering the process. I think of a dragon having two stages (at least when it boils down to the hands-on time consuming part): There’s the actual sculpting of the dragon, which obviously takes me the most time. But then there’s the color mixing. I normally don’t mind this part, but when I’m in a crunch (and when I can feel my hands starting to give out), this becomes a pesky time suck. So while I’m doing something like waiting for one dragon to bake, even if I still have more sculpting to do with that particular one, I’ll jump right into the next one by starting the color palette.

It creates an even messier work space since I have so much clay waiting around, but it helps me feel like I’m working through everything faster. Plus, I love posting the palettes on Instagram for every dragon as a preview of what’s to come.

Each dragon is usually made up of three to five colors. A base color, a main accent color, and any other accent colors I want to add. These are planned out ahead of time so I can get right to work. Some are mixed with guidance from ColorMixr. Others are just based off of a faint idea and I just mix up from there.

While I’m not going into the process of how each one was made, I did want to showcase a gallery of what to expect at the first art walk:

And I’ll leave you with that! Find me on Instagram for live streams of working on dragons. Otherwise, I’ll catch you in two weeks for the final art walk prep blog going over the things I do outside of dragon making to get ready for the art walk.