Roughly two months ago we finished the #princessartcollab on Instagram. Originally meant to be a one off community collab to provide a fun outlet for creativity, it was open to all mediums. All you had to do was follow the theme and include #princessartcollab on your post so we could show support for the other creators participating.
You may remember me mentioning in the #princessartcollab blog post that we’d have an announcement to make. One of the members from the original group, @amotherofdragoneggs, reached out to me afterwards to see if I would be interested in helping her continue the collab as an every other month event, and that’s how #purecollab came to be. Each round would have an overarching theme, and then there would be four weekly themes we’d use to guide our creations.
We just wrapped up our first round of themes the week before last. The overall theme was ‘Tis the Season for the holidays with four weekly themes: food, fall, winter, and holiday spirit.
I know this is a tricky time of year as people get busy with traveling and the holidays, but we still had some people who were able to participate with the collab!
Thank you guys so much for participating! I loved being able to check out the hashtag and see your work there.
The next theme will be announced on January 7 on my Instagram. I like to give everyone a two week heads up so you can start preparing. It’s a fun one, and I really can’t wait to see what comes out of it!
If there’s enough interest, we’re also looking into creating an Instagram account dedicated to the collab where we’d be able to feature people’s work.
I wanted to take some time to share the dragons I made for this collab as well. This way they’re in one place instead of strewn across my Instagram and Facebook feeds.
Unlike #princessartcollab, I decided not to keep a cohesive pose across the four dragons. Instead, I decided to play off of foody things for the first three themes. My Facebook group helped me with the fourth theme since I was having trouble with generating a clear idea for what I wanted to do for holiday spirit.
Theme 1: Food
This idea came to me when I was first announcing the overall theme, and I couldn’t shake it. I wasn’t sure how it would come across to people, but I knew I had to try it for the sake of the challenge. It’s probably a little morbid, but I think the end result turned out cute!
I wanted to make a little roasted dragon (inspired by the traditional turkey made for Thanksgiving) with some of the typical sides you’d probably see during the meal. The dragon is made from one color of clay, and then I layered several colors of chalk pastels to created a roasted meat color, with highlights of a deep reddish brown.
I stippled the surface with ballpoint tools and a toothbrush to help give it the texture roasted turkey has too. Many reference images were used to help keep it as realistic as my current skill set allowed for.
Theme 2: Fall
Maybe it was the fun of making the roasted dragon, but I was on a food kick, and I couldn’t help but realize there are two overwhelmingly popular seasonal flavors for this time of year, with fall being represented by pumpkin spice.
For this dragon, I mixed up a special blend of polymer clay (you can find the tutorial here) to help give an extra layer of dimension to the pumpkin spice look. It transcends the pure color alone, and I was very happy with the final result.
Theme 3: Winter
The other flavor people go crazy for this time of year is peppermint (and I’m on that bandwagon, personally–give me ALL the peppermint). I originally thought this would be a fun way to get back to practicing my gradient control because I knew candy cane stripes would need to be involved.
I was going to go hard core and make this little dragon ENTIRELY a striped gradient, and then I decided to tone it down by applying it only to the legs (because they’re candy cane shaped ish, right?). Overall it was a fun experience, and I learned a lot from it for future striped projects.
Theme 4: Holiday Spirit
As I mentioned earlier, I took to my Facebook group [o help me figure out what I should do for holiday spirit. I asked them what they thought of, and the majority went along the lines of Christmas trees and lights, so I decided to create a Christmas tree inspired dragon. He is a deep evergreen color with classic colors to accent: red, silver, and gold.
He is carrying a little gold star and has a string of lights wrapping around him. I didn’t have enough time to wait for an online order, so I made the string of lights by gluing sparkly Christmas light buttons to a leather cord, painting where they attach black (helps blend the cord, glue, and light bulb base together), and attaching it to the dragon after baking.
I love this little set of dragons! It was fun kicking back and doing a bit more experimentation than I’ve done recently. Do you have a favorite? I think mine is the roasted dragon!