Joliesdragons–PYOs: Ocean FooP (page 3)

Thanks all–compliments from the crew here mean a great deal!

Great Job he looks fantastic. I hope you loved painting it and found a lot of personal satisfaction in it. I totally get what your saying about “seeing all the flaws”. I do the same thing with mine and I just notice all the little things wrong instead of seeing all of the beauty! You really did a nice job! 🙂

I did enjoy it, and it’s nice to have a project that’s COMPLETE in just a few days. My other major project is about to hit the six month mark with no end in sight, so the not-quite-but-almost immediate satisfaction of getting this done left me with a sense of accomplishment. LOL

The griffin’s going to take a while longer though, I think. I’ve already changed designs several times…

He turned out quite nice >.< Matches that geode he is standing on really well too!

It’s a running joke around here that I love rocks. Fossils, geodes, whatever. We have a two-man piece of petrified wood in the yard that the previous owner left because he couldn’t move it. I told my husband it’s coming with us when WE move–I don’t care if I have to hire professionals! LOL

Second PYO is complete, and he’ll likely be the last for a bit as I have some medical stuff coming up starting this week that may keep me from doing this kind of work. Besides, after this one, I have a TON of stuff to catch up on.

Meet Doctor Who, the griffin:

So the name–no, I’m not a huge fan of the Doctor; I barely watch TV at all except for baseball. But let me tell you, this little guy is a freaking Time Lord. For the last four days, I’ve sat in positions I can’t normally hold for long, forgotten more meals than I’ve eaten, can’t remember conversations I’ve had or ball games I listened to. I haven’t escaped him even when I sleep–I’ve been dreaming of paint I can’t find, brushes I’ve unexpectedly lost, etc. I can’t tell you how many times I’d look up and go, “Wait, it’s 4 PM already? I just sat down and it was right after breakfast!” Time just didn’t pass normally while working on him.

And for those of you who ARE fans–he went through several incarnations as I either decided to change paint schemes or a technique went awry or I realized I was out of a specific paint color! LOL So the name does somewhat fit.

Reality-wise: His upper half is based on the jackal buzzard of South Africa. I was hunting for hawk and eagle pics online and came across one, then started pulling down more of them until I had enough to work with. I had to take some liberties in terms of pattern, and I really wanted the gold eyes (these guys occasionally have copper, but they’re usually brown). But for the most part, I think if you look up the bird, you’ll see where it came from. There’s a fair amount of very subtle metallics brushed into the all black feathers to add a little more depth and texture to them–the birds tend to be mostly more dark grey than black, and often have a few hints of white or the rusty red peeking through.

Problems: Oh dear lord. Well, I learned a lot. I think I need better/newer paint–I’m losing too much detail even with the thinnest coats. And something’s still not working right with the antiquing. The DecoArt bottle is brand new, and has the right consistency (thick gel), but no matter what paint I mix it with, I end up with something that applies more like a watery acrylic. Add in that I just couldn’t decide what to antique with–went way too dark and too brown, he ended up muddy looking. He took a lot of reworking to make him liveable, and he still looks a bit dirty.

His lower half, for example, was supposed to be a lion…yeah. No. Could not get that to look right, hence the black panther look (with a whitish belly) he’s now sporting. I did highlight the musculature and tail with very very tiny drybrushed bits of gold paint on the raised surfaces, and a pearlized black on the indented ones, which makes the overall black a little less bland. But there’s so many layers on there, I lost way too much detail. Live and learn.

All in all, he probably came out better than I deserved, considering how many times I changed my mind about how to tackle him! (But man, I’m glad he’s done. I need a break after him!)

Well Jolie…….from just looking at the pictures I would have never guessed that he gave you the difficulties that he did. He really does look great!!!

I totally understand the “Try this…..nope…….rework that……..
maybe……hum what should I do now” HEHE

I did that a lot and I think for all you went through you did a brilliant job. HE really looks like you fully intended each and every detail right from the get go.

GREAT JOB!! 🙂 🙂

Thanks–he really was a pain in the you know what, but I think the antiquing was the worst of it. I definitely need to figure out the problem between my paint and the DecoArt medium before I tackle the next one. And of course, choose the right color to antique with. LOL

I *am* looking forward to dragons being back in stock, but shudder to think about what THEY’LL teach me! 😉