Origami Dragon Sculpture 1

UPDATE: I have gotten some professional photography of this now! See it here [link] and there's another professional shot linked in that submission. Check it out if you like the idea of this.

this is an origami dragon sculpture i made as a project for my art class last year. it took me about 8 weeks to finish, and some very sore hands.

i hand folded all 3,000+ scales from my own folding design and hot-glued them to the body... ugh....

this link goes to a group of other more detailed pics of various parts on the dragon [link]

i started by making a chickenwire frame, then covering it plaster cast strips (not regular plaster, it was sorta like cloth, but when you get it wet, it hardens; the stuff you get when you break your arm). the wings have bubble wrap and hanger wire in them so that they are light, yet not falling off or droopy. the scales on the underbelly are criss-crossed like the hilt of a katana near the front, then just layered regular toward the tail. the smallest scales are cut out (due to the difficulty and number of folds in each scale, they would puff out and not look good), but not that many of them are the small ones. the eyes and tongue are from red foil paper, the eyes folded from part of a geometric pattern. the teeth are paper pieces twisted up after being dampened, then they dry in that shape, same with the claws. there is cloth fabric over the hands, wings, and mouth to give it a smooth look. the wings have tissue paper as the flight membrane, so it is semi-transparent, going with the idea of dragon wings being somewhat see-through.

this was a very difficult project for me, mainly because I had no referrence for it; it came completely from my own head. Even the dragon's make was not from referrences of dragons. I had never attempted anything like this before.

A side note:
Don't make a giant sculpture without making sure it will fit in your car first. Yes I know it sounds like common sense, but that was one detail I forgot about.. heh.. luckily, it just barely could fit into the back of my mom's full-size suburban with the back seat down (yes it is that big).