Bertha the (fountain) Dragon and Roland the Frog

This piece is almost done, but still work-in-progress.

 

The idea is a little fountain for the garden in which a lying dragon is spouting water - and hits a frog, who's carrying an umbrella.

Pretty silly, isn't it?

 

Well, as usual I started off with a little base.

Onto which I added a slab of clay, starting the basic shape for Bertha.

The hind leg and claws.

And the front leg. The texture of the ground was done with a stiff brush.

As you can see I'm a sucker for smoothing early, but I prefer to have most of the textures early in the sculpt.

The other sides hind leg,

and the front leg, exposing the pose.

The right paw.

Then I inserted a hose, which will in the end be used to connect to the water pump for the fountain.

Around this I started the neck and basic head.

The head got heavy and needed some support :)

Starting the facial structures.

And adding details such as horns and the tiny wings.

Then the wings received their skin(?)

After removing the support I felt the neck was to thick, so I reworked the lines.

Better, but now it needed extra time with the support.

While the neck cured, I started with the frog section.

For this I created a little lily pad.

And started with the basic shape for Roland,

and positioned him on the pad.

Then I started the legs.

and arms :)

Next was to create Roland's umbrella.

I wanted to do a rather large leaf, from which the water would be deflected. So I sculpted the basic shape and let it cure.

In the meantime I hollowed the dragon.

This is necessary for the burn process, but also for inserting the hose once Bertha is burnt.

I managed to hollow her and even remove the hose without any major damage - some small scratches were easily covered again.

So this is the final walk-around for Bertha:

With Bertha completed I wanted to position the leaf umbrella on Roland.

But the leaf was to heavy for the stalk and it broke off :(

 

So I decided to sculpt a smaller mushroom instead.

The mushroom needs to cure a bit before I can position it safely, and then I still need to sculpt Roland's hand holding it.

I hope you like this little scene and I look forward to your comments and feedback.

Cheers

klaus