Dragon Sculpture

I had completed 2 projects when I began visualizing this dragon sculpture. I was on a quest to become a good wood worker hobbyist and consequently wanted to challenge myself. In that quest to become more skillful and, better, I was adding complexity to the design envisioning wherein I could particularly highlight the characteristic quality of plywood: it’s multiple layers.

In each step of the project, I wanted to envision the layers as something to be showcased, to push the frame to its limits and thereby gaining and improving skills to push the plywood board to its limits. 

The central area can be used to serve multiple utilities like act as a notice board. When combined with another design piece and clamps, it could be used as a book or a leaf press.

Materials:

16 mm Plywood

Tools: 

Hand Drill machine with standard chuck, 

Jigsaw, 

Various sets of files including rasp, rough, flat, half round and needle files, 

emery paper - no. 80, 120, 320, 

chisel set (I used the standard 12 piece wood carving chisels from amazon)

Hammer

Fine needle files

Clamps

Grinding (carborundum) stone - for sharpening the chisels

Heads up:

This project mainly requires sculpting through a lot of chisel work.

My overall project required two important steps: Design and then a lot of filing work for creating profiles. I loved doing every single bit of it in my quest to improve as a hobbyist and visualize the intricacies of what is very unique to plywood… alternating shades of layers.

I have divided the design into two sections: the inspiration and motivation, and, translating the inspiration/motivation into an actual form. 

Inspiration:

I have always been fascinated by curves. After drifting through hardware stores for materials for countless hours, I wanted to create something that was pure and fell under true creation. Eventually, I looked at home and my eyes fell upon a plain plywood board 3 feet x 4 feet in size approximately. 

To be plain and simple, the complexity of this project demanded extreme focus. It was a very slow process underlying the fact that a single mistake could ruin the entire project. Last, but not least, my motivation was puritanical to showcase the beauty of possibilities through a simple piece of plywood board, to bring some unforeseen elements of nature to this piece, thereby transforming it to a larger than life utilitarian sculpture. By utilitarian, here I wanted to not just design something of ‘beauty’, but to provide the sculpture with multi-dimensional utilities such as a notice board, or a book press (when used with another design piece). 

Translating thought into design:

Bringing the dragon to a form was my long term dream. While carving out from a wooden block into a 3-d figure (-ine) would become a show piece, I was looking for it to rest on the wall and possess a utility! 

I free hand drew the pencil sketch on the board and proceeded for the cut. The cuts included cutting the board with a jigsaw. For the wings cut throughs, I made the initial cuts through a drill machine and then slid the jigsaw blade to make the full cut throughs.

For the face, I wanted to give the dragon a friendly face… not a ferocious one! It was all hand chiseled carving and no hammer was used considering the delicacy of the face. At each step of chiseling and using the needle files, I ensured that the various layers be utilized to present with different facial features e.g. cheeks at one level, chin at the other, the horns were a combination of levels and a nose profile.

Cutting the wing slots from plain section was one task. To grind the correct profiles and to create the correct holistic symmetry, curves in each one of them demanded a lot of filing. I used the round rasp for shaping up the interior, the half round rasp for the exterior, and the half round and round regular files along with 60 grit emery paper for shaping up the the exterior right wing section.

The dragon’s tail should have a worthy significance and a considerable pointy-ness to it. A critical decision was to keep it attached to the main body and separate the end from the main plywood section. I wanted to push the frame and check its limits. So, I decided to separate the tail-end from the main frame and give the entire tail a 3-dimensional shape. 

At this point, the piece was taking an overall form. Now came a very challenging task: I had to create the wings out of nothing. It was a plain board and carving the wings out into multiple numbers was looking the next challenge.

Giving it a depth profile required a lot of hammer and chisel work. Quite a few times, I was simply using the chisel only to get through to the correct profile in my head. I had to get a feel of the wood and understand how much the plywood board could be pushed. I tried bringing out the layers of the plywood and elaborate on the beauty of the wings through the various curves and profiles.

I decided to go with a plain look and a very light spray of lacquer simply to showcase the various layers of the sculpture. The most important aspect for me to use the plywood were its layers. The different colors of the wings have been carved directly from the multiple contrasting layers of the plywood board. So, I intended to show them at all times, and not conceal them with some artificial stain. Quite some effort had gone into shaping up the layers and I intended to protect and exhibit them at the same time.

Here are some final views of the sculpture to show the depth of the layers. Without the proper tools, the correct profiles would not have been possible.

One of the most underrated aspects of using tools is their maintenance. As I was pushing the plywood board to its limit, I had to focus on using the apt tool with their correct accuracy and sharpness. The chisels for all the hand work had to be sharpened to utilize correct depth and angles at various intricate places. Sharpened hand tools is the key!

Thank you for viewing till the end. :)