Well, hopefully it won't take me the whole of 2013...but over the Xmas holidays I started off a big beading project, a sculptural piece in the form of a beaded dragon.
Through a Facebook beading group a fantastic bead artist and her wonderful (and free) tutorials was drawn to my attention, and the thing that captured my imagination most was her tutorial for a large beaded dragon. I'm a lover of all things fantasy (just started book 5 of Game of Thrones the other day) and so I decided to take the plunge, buy some beads and get started.
The tutorial allows plenty of room for you to customise your dragon to your own tastes - mine is going to have plenty of sparkle. I have been working on the head to start with and have been pleasantly surprised at how quickly it has beaded up given that it's way bigger than anything I've ever worked on before.
This picture shows the head after I'd beaded the top and bottom jaws, joined them together and added in a beaded tongue. I'm using Toho gold-lustered 'moonshadow' seed beads as my main colour - these beads are one of my faves, a light purple with pink and green colour flashes, very dragony I think. I made his top lip a bit pointier than in the tutorial and I think I am going to add on some more detailed nostrils at some point too.
This is what he looks like as of now. The tutorial used faceted round beads for the eyes, but I bezelled two light vitrail rivolis for my dragon. I'm not 100% certain they're positioned right so I've left the threads loose so I can unpick. I want my dragon to have a 'brow' of some sort which is going to take me a little while to figure out.
Obviously, this dragon is a long term project and one I can pick up in between beading other things, but I will keep you up to date on the blog with his evolution. I'm really enjoying working on him, never having done 3D beading to this extent...hopefully I will be able to come up with my own scuptural work after he is finished, I have a few ideas, just not the skill yet to realise them, but I think this piece will provide me with that.
Here's a link to the tutorial I am using if you'd like to make your own dragon http://rrkra.deviantart.com/art/Big-Bead-Dragon-Tutorial-207390628 - I recommend looking at the gallery too to see more of Rrkra's fabulous work.
Happy New Year to you all
Nicole
xoxo
2 comments:
He's gorgeous!!! I love how you've changed the eyes up, and really look forward to seeing your progress! Good luck with your corrections, too - I hope it's less painful than the process!!! :D
Looking forward to seeing this progress
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