Dragon #2 by Cindy Williams

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New Paper Mache Dragon Tutorial by Cindy Williams

Well, I did it again. Enough time has passed and I had to make another full-bodied paper mache dragon. So, I checked out some images online for ideas, made some measurements for where it would hang on the ceiling, and away I went.

I always chuckle at the first picture:

I hope folks get a kick out of how crude and simple these projects start. After one session, the mighty red dragon is just a wad of masking tape, crumpled plastic grocery bags, and a wooden dowel sunk into the chest, which will serve as the ceiling attachment point later.

A note on using grocery bags vs newspaper for the armature. I don’t know about you, but it’s harder to come by newspaper these days. Plastic grocery bags, however, are everywhere. Pop into your local grocery store and I bet they have a big recycling bin of them out front. Help yourself! I’m fairly convinced the plastic is stronger than paper, and I especially like plastic for wrapping around wire, which I used in the tail, legs, toes, and wings.

Here is the dragon body taking form after quite a few hours of work:

At this point, it’s just grocery bags, tape and wire. For now, the dragon is one piece, but I would do the wings and head separately. It’s just easier to paper mache some parts when they aren’t attached.

This picture shows plastic bags wrapped around wire to create the wing fingers:

And here we have one wing ready to paper mache and one nearly ready:

Now onto the head. I used the same method of crumpled grocery bags and tape to create the structure:

I also like using cardboard to help create certain shapes like the big horns, nose horn and sharp ridge running down the snout. Cardboard can help serve as a template like with the horns, or just help create a sharper edge, like with the snout. I also used a bit of wire to map out the lower jaw.

Once the head was to form, I began to apply paper mache:

To paper mache, I use a simple mixture of white flour, Elmer’s white glue and water. I never measure, just mix to consistency. I use ripped up pieces of blue shop towel for the paper mache “skin,” which is why the dragon looks blue. Shop towels, in my opinion, are far superior to newspaper in strength and holding more details when applied over the armature. Generally, if something needs to be load bearing or strong, I will apply up to 4 layers of shop tower paper mache, usually doing two layers at once, letting it dry, then coming back and adding two more. For the head, which is not load bearing, I used just one layer.

Once the head and jaw were paper mached, I sculpted teeth and eyebrow ridges out of Super Sculpy oven bake clay, and glued them into place:

The clay around the eye is a two-part epoxy Magic Sculpt clay, which dries and hardens in place. The glass eyes I got on Etsy.

Now for scales!

I doubled up pieces of shop towel using rubber cement, then carefully marked out face scales on the doubled up sheet. Once dry, I cut out the scales and paper mached them onto the face. You can see the way I labeled the scales to keep them in the right spot.

Before attaching the head, I painted the horns, mouth, and teeth:

Think ahead if you’re doing a big piece on how you will be able to rotate and access the sculpture. Once the strategic painting was done, I attached the head and lower jaw. This was tricky, as I made some estimates about how the dragon would hang on the ceiling and at what angle the head needed to be.

To attach the head, I used hot glue, masking tape and paper mache:

Once the head was on, I realized my proportions were off. Oops.

No worries, it’s just plastic and tape:

I flipped the dragon over and beefed up the chest, legs, and tail. You can cut off and reattach limbs as well as add more plastic bag, tape and paper mache onto already paper mached surfaces, so don’t worry if you mess something up!

With the proportions fixed, I flipped the beast over again and started to attach the wings:

With the wings propped up, I used wire, tape, and plastic bags to connect the wings onto the dowels in the arms.

The step ladder and office chair were a great help holding the wings in place as I eyed things for symmetry:

Now that the wings were attached, I used a strand of wire to run between the wing fingers and map out the shape of the wing membrane:

Using an old bed sheet dipped in straight white glue, I draped the gluey sheet in place over the wire and left it to dry overnight:

On a side note, I used an old t shirt sheet. I would never do that again, as it absorbed so much glue, then later on absorbed a ton of primer and paint. Pro tip – use slicker, less cottony sheets.

With the wings dried, I flipped the dragon back on its belly to finish up a few last paper mache details around the wings and toes:

Then I made a painting plan:

This sculpture was now 7’ wide and weighed close to 35 pounds. I had to do the painting in two stages, first with the dragon on its back, then a last final flip onto its stomach. I got the dragon into place on its back, and primed the whole underside in white gesso.

Another side note – look carefully at the primed dragon. See all those little scales everywhere? Even though adding all these scales literally took me an entire audio book’s time, I don’t have any pictures from this stage. I cut hundreds of doubled up scales out of shop towel, dipped them in paper mache, then carefully applied each one. Same idea for the larger belly and tail scales. It adds a neat texture.

Painting time!

My painting strategy is to pick several colors for each dragon part, and apply starting light to dark. I like to wipe areas to create a fade/shadow effect, which is easily seen in the wings. This part took a very, very long time, as painting always does.

Once everything I could access with the dragon on its back was painted, I applied a sealer coat and flipped it over.

At this stage, I hit pause on the painting and started creating back plates out of a cardboard box:

Here you can see me eyeballing how the back plates sit on the neck.

The next step was to paper mache each plate separately, let dry, then hot glue them onto the dragon:

Each plate got spikes made out of cardboard:

Then each spike was paper mached separately, left to dry, then hot glued back in place.

Then back to painting again! My painting plan had accounted for the fact that once I made the back plates with spikes, I could never again lay the dragon on its back. And everything worked to plan.

The plates themselves were really fun to paint, and I used a fluorescent red to really make them pop:

I followed the same color scheme as on the underside, and the end was in sight:

Then before I knew or could believe it, my 2 year long project was hanging from the ceiling like it had always been there. I sunk a heavy-duty eye screw into the top of the chest dowel and used a bit of chain to attach it to another heavy-duty eye screw in the ceiling. The I made a custom p cord strap to loop around the tail, and attached that with another chain to the ceiling.

And here it is, my big red dragon, smiling down from above:

Thanks to anyone who read through this, and I hope it brings inspiration to you. Paper mache is such an accessible, cheap, yet durable and versatile way to make sculptures. It’s a super strong medium, and once you get a sense of the basics, I honestly think the sky is the limit for what you want to make. -Cindy

Related Posts:

Dragon Mask Pattern for Paper Mache

Make a Dragon Head Wall Sculpture

How Cindy Made Her Paper Mache Dragon