I’ve been hard at work again the past two weeks on yet another dragon! Now that I’m finished, I only have one more project to do before I hit a red light on personal projects and start work on my senior year projects over the next school year. In this episode, I want to talk about this secondary dragon and how he differs from the one featured in the previous blog post. I’ll also go over my upcoming project I’ll be working on this week.

The basis for this dragon is Smaug from Lord of the Rings. My friend’s mom requested him as they were just creating a room in their house that is themed after the book series. She let me know to take my time. I usually end up visiting once or twice in the summer, so I was able to get it done before my yearly visit. There are various designs for Smaug. Between the book series and the movies as well as merchandise, there are a lot of inconsistencies. I went with the design with wing-hands. Some dragons are depicted with four legs and wings, others are depicted with more bat-like anatomy. Their wings double as their front legs. This does make more sense given real creatures, but I believe both are fun. All depictions of Smaug are generally within a red to yellow color palette. I saw a few that incorporated gray. I decided to go with a rusty orange body with red wings and eyelids and gray horns and wing arms. Here is a picture of the dragon with the eyelids and head and neck started:

The body was the most arduous part of the process. Smaug didn’t require too many add ons. The other dragon had fins and lots of extra details, but Smaug is a lot more classic. I created his horns next and sewed them on. After that, I got to work on the wings. They always take longer than expected as sewing them up is a significant part of the process. Here he is with one wing finished:

and here he is with that wing sewn on:

Once I completed and sewed on the other wing, he was ready to be taken over to my friend’s house, just in time for our get-together.

And the images above are the finished product! The customer greatly appreciated it and has given me a few more commissions to work my way through. I’ll likely have them done for them again next summer. In the meantime, this week I’m going to be going back to my roots and focusing on a pencil sketch of my grandfather that my grandmother commissioned me for. His birthday is coming up this coming weekend, so I’ll be making sure that is all ready. I’m sure I’ll post updates in the next one.

More to come!

~Marissa N.