Dragon is Born

I have always loved dragons, their mystery, their strength, their spirit  and their protection of hearth and home.  Dragons are composite "mythical" animals that have both hot and cold blooded features.  As such, they are symbols of the changing seasons.

Last year I featured one of my dragon creations (a water dragon with mermaid riding him)  in a show at the Coast Collective and it was so well received that two customers wanted the piece!  This was personally satisfying as working in isolation one never knows how one's work will be accepted by the general public.  I sold the dragon to one lovely lady and promised the other that I would make another dragon/mermaid in 2015 for her own.  She was thrilled and requested a dark-skinned mermaid with straight black hair.

Last week I started choosing my fabrics for this project.  I knew that I wanted blues/purples for the dragon and greens for the mermaid.  Here are the fabrics I choose for the dragon:

I find that the fabric selection is a vital part of the creative process because as a doll maker you are in essence painting your doll art with the fabric as your palette.  If the colours in the fabric do not form a pleasing palette, then no matter how good your work, it will not resonate.

I love using Melinda Small Patterson's (Smallworks) dragon patterns as they are very detailed and excellent to use.  For this piece I used her "Kells Wyvern" pattern.

For the dragon's mermaid companion, I used Patti LaValley's "Mareena" mermaid pattern as she is a sweet young looking mermaid that is in a reclining position, perfect for my needs.  For the mermaid, I used four fabrics of green print and crazy patched them together so that I could decorate the seams with embroidery and beads as I love to do.  I thought this would be perfect for a mermaid as she picks of seaweed and foliage from the sea floor as she swims.

The resulting piece turned out very well and I am thrilled!  I hope my customer loves him as well.  Here is the proud water dragon's face:

Noticed that I painted his eye and enhanced the fabric by using metallic silver paint for his jaw line and top of his muzzle and horns.

The entire piece was inspired by my love of dragons and mermaids and living near the Pacific ocean.  I thought of a water loving dragon who soars near the waves picking up dragonflies along his daily fly by.  One day he spotted a beckoning beautiful mermaid who was not afraid to stay close to his flight path.  She jumped on his back and he took her for a ride that thrilled her to this very day.

 You can clearly see that I love to add details to my pieces and this dragon has a sequinned/beaded belly and beads on his claws that follow the pattern on the fabric.

The mermaid's face is painted using acrylic paints (eyes and mouth), pigma marker (eyelashes, brows) and chalk (shading, blushing, highlights).  The dragonfly on the mermaids's arm is beaded.  The dragon's tail also has dragonflies.

The mermaid's body and tail are beaded and I added beaded fringe to the dragon's tail.  For the mermaid's hair I took apart a doll wig that had the perfect black hair that I wanted and altered it to fit her head.  I had the perfect sequinned decoration for her hair in my stash.

A final look at my piece, showing the lace fingerless gloves, the facial features and painted fingernails of this sweet mermaid.