Christi Friesen Dragon Swap/Book

I don’t join many swaps – I tend to get busy and I’m afraid I’d miss the deadline. But when Lynne mentioned at our guild meeting that she was hosting a dragon swap with Christi Friesen’s style, I couldn’t resist. I love sculpting dragons anyway and I’ve been admiring Christi’s work recently.

So I checked out her site, and studied all the gorgeous work she has there. Then I dug out my stash of gem beads and ended up creating these little guys. They have garnet eyes and some also include citrine, amethyst, pearls and sea urchin spines. The sea urchin spines inspired the color combination. The hardest part was deciding which one to keep for myself!

While I was on Christi’s site, I had noticed the new dragon book she has out. And since I had had so much fun and learned quite a bit just from looking at her work, I figured I could at least send her the $11 bucks for the booklet Especially since I felt so weird about blatantly copying another artist’s style – even for a swap she knew about. I’m the type who never makes an exact copy of a project that I find in a book or magazine because it wouldn’t be mine.

I’m very glad I got the booklet. The whole thing is visually wonderful with full color dragons and step by step photos on every page, and the writing is witty and entertaining. I picked up some tips that will help me with my own sculpting and really enjoyed the eye candy. She also has a few of the sweetest dragon illustrations – I’d love to see a line of greeting cards or a childrens book using them. She covers sculpting one dragon from start to finish and shows variations on eyes, tails, wings, etc to inspire you. Then there are short sections on making stand alone sculptures, cabochons, vessels, etc. You could definitely learn to sculpt some very nice dragons with this book.

I’m just hoping that I didn’t pick up TOO much of Christi’s style, I can see that it could get addicting I’m already thinking of trying gem eyes for some of my own sculpted critters to see if it would give them the same depth I liked in the dragon eyes.