My Three-Headed Dragon Project

In a previous post, I mentioned that I wanted to build a three-headed dragon for the roof of my studio in the front of the house. Also, in a few posts, I hoped that I would have my pottery wheel out and going strong by this time - ha! Fortunately, I have a backstock of bisqueware to work with in the meantime to glaze and fire off, keeping my front display case and Etsy store stocked. Instead of making new things in clay, I have been super busy with tattoos and two brief trips out of town. Not that I'm complaining. February was a great month!

One of the projects I'm working on is my first Moleskine journal swap with fellow artists from www.IllustratedATCs.com. There are six of us in this group and we all bought the same journal, chose a theme, and were assigned a mailing partner by the host. On the February 15th, the journals were mailed. We had the option of starting our journal off with our own work, but I decided to decorate the cover and send it on its way, letting the artists interpret my theme of 'Waiting in Line' without my influence beyond my explanation. I will add my drawings to finish it up when in lands back home in July. The journals are accordian-style, and I plan on displaying it as one long panel in my studio - so exciting!

Then, I received a journal about a week later. This artist's chosen theme is the Leonardo daVinci sketchbooks. Part of her instructions were: "..how about any of his "studies" anatomy, inventions, human, animal, the whole works, but not his finished work, just the studies, I love sketches..." A few years ago, his sketchbooks were on tour and my sister and I went to see them when they were on display at the Mass MoCA in North Adams, so I had a pretty good idea what she was looking for as far as style. Subject matter was left completely open. While I am no daVinci, it presented the perfect opportunity to get the idea for my dragon down on paper for the first time, including a loose plan for the interior support structure, although not exactly as detailed as the armature. I will have to work that part out in the scale model.

Typically in the journal swaps, there are eight artists who create for four pages in the journal. In this case, we're short two artists. It was discussed on the thread whether people preferred to do extra pages, have extra pages done, etc. Fortunately with this daVinci journal, she let me do the extra page so I could then draw the main sketches as two-page spreads, versus two single panels and one two-page spread.

For my journal, I requested that my fellow participants do their panels throughout my book, instead of consecutively, unless that's really the way they wanted to go. According to the rules of iATCs, I must complete this first journal swap before I can participate in another. Once I've successfully done the round, I have a feeling that my journal collection will begin to grow. Hooray! It's so cool that people will be able to flip through books full of original drawings in addition to all the tattoo books and magazines while waiting for their friend to be finished getting inked...