I've mentioned a few times that I use leftover bits of glass when constructing these animals, and this wyvern, which is my first sculptural beastie for 2006, is a good example. (Wyverns, for those of you not into mythological beasties, are, at least for the purposes of this post, dragons with only two legs—easier, see?). Recall the various striped ornaments, such as the butterscotch and cobalt striped one recently featured.

Wyvern, jan 2005. Borosilicate, approx. 50x80mm.

As I've mentioned such an ornament starts out as a longintudinally striped tube, which is twisted: in fact, the ends of the tube (which are called points) are twisted right off, which makes the spiralling patterns. Any time you see stripes in one of these sculptures, you can be pretty sure, as for the legs in this wyvern, that they come from points used to make striped ornaments.

Once again the color is very nice and rich in the photo:)

This is particularly obvious in the left leg. The paws/claws are added later, so they are made of different glass. Even more than the first dragon in this series I think the legs are too big for the body, and the wings too small, and I ended up pre-striking the ruby in the tail, which meant it opacified.

But at least the tail has a nice shape. In fact, it's my favorite part.

file created 01feb06

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.