dragon study - tail Part 1

I am working on a new dragon study for the Fast Friday challenge. This month I am behind, since I was working on lessons when the challenge was set. However, the Art principles and colour themes were S- Curve and split-complementary. S-curve goes nicely with dragons. And I thought I'd do blue with yellow-orange and red-orange for the split-complementary.

One detail of a dragon I have been wanting to do better artistically is the tail. So this is a study of the tail.

I have shown you a few doodles I have been doing lately. I discovered that I could use the doodle concept to work out design patterns. One of these I have been developing is the shape and pattern for a dragon tail. After I practiced, I then worked on sketching the tail and getting it right on a piece of paper the size of the final piece - 6x12in. (Remember, I am also using these for journal quilts with the Contemporary Quilt group.)

Then I traced it through with the light box, and then started thread painting. Here is the start of the tail. It is on a red-orange coppery coloured glazed cotton. This is layered onto a thin wadding. When the thread painting is finished, it is trimmed and then put onto blue silk dupion. I want the effect of just catching a glimpse of the end of the dragon as it flies across the sky.

Here is the tail thread painted. I hope you can see the patterning. At this point, I am not sure how I will do the wing. So I have not trimmed the piece of red-orange with the wing traced.Here is a detail of the patterning. I will have to stitch the thread painted tail to the blue background. Because the blue will be the top of more wadding and a backing fabric, when the tail is stitched on, it will stand out a bit. Before I do that though, I want to put clouds, somewhat like some oriental dragon embroideries have. The clouds will be of a yellow-orange silk rescued from a silk charity shop blouse.

I will show you how I get on later in the week.