olimtree

[olimtree]

I recently read „Asinus Aureus“ (The Golden Donkey) by Apuleius, which incorporates the love story of Amor and Psyche. Apart from being an overall very entertaining book, I cherished the small details very much, one of them that it is very rare for Amor to fall in love. So I think it makes sense to read him as demiromantic and demisexual. After all, he only falls in love with Psyche. 

For his design, I tried to mostly orient myself on the description in the book, but took some artistic liberties. He’s described as pale, with golden hair and white wings. I kept the golden hair, but figured that it would make sense for his skin to be tan, because he’s constantly flying around. On his shoulder, you can see the burn scar where Psyche once accidentally dripped some hot oil on him. 

I styled his wings after the European turtle dove, because of the German idiom where „being like turtle doves“ means being in love. Trying to shade the feathers or even give them that typical greenish shimmer was very difficult. White wings would certainly have been less trouble to paint. Worse than trying to find a good reference picture of the underside of the wings of a turtle dove was learning that these beautiful and adorable animals are threatened by extinction.

Since his job requires him to be able to move as freely as possible, I styled his outfit similar to that of a trapeze artist :)

Happy Pride everybody!

[olimtree]

I made this for myself. It's the Inkdragon. It fulfils the purpose of holding my ink cartridges because I keep losing them all the time. It doesn't have a name yet. I am super proud of it.

[olimtree]

Them: Leichenschmaus

Me, an intellectual: Leichnamnamnam

[olimtree]

For every minor and major issue, the Catholic Church has a Saint to deal with that very specific problem.

I, however, have dragons for that.

[olimtree]

Finally finished!!!

[olimtree]

The first dragon I ever built, that was in 2019, briefly before the first cases of Corona came. Second is the dragon I've been working on since last May and that I finally finished today by adding the varnish.

I remember how scared I was when I started working on the first dragon. I feared that I would make something ugly and ridiculous that is evidence that I lack the talent, the skills and the intelligence to make something nice. But the end result looked pretty decent.

Now I have six years of experience and my dragons are slowly evolving. And while the new dragon looks a lot different than the first one and is actually supposed to help me with my chores, I love and cherish them both.

[olimtree]

It starts looking like a little something :)

[olimtree]

Keep on working on my dragons :) I hope they'll turn out well. At the moment, they don't like like much yet, but I put my faith in the process

Anyone an idea what looks good on silver

[olimtree]

Kept working on the pencil holder dragon, but didn't make much progress. This is the part of the project that I dislike: The moment of doubting, where I think that everything sucks and looks awful and I messed everything up. But after that comes the phase where I think: "Hey, look, that looks pretty nice."

Second picture is a smaller water-inspired dragon that's been sitting on my desk for months now. I had already painted it before but didn't like how it looked, so I sprayed it again with silver and metallic green. Today, I painted scales on it :) There are some pros and cons in sculpting scales/surface texture vs keeping it smooth: Surface texture looks pretty cool. But it is super difficult to paint patterns and details on it. Smooth texture is easier to paint, but the tiniest bump or crack will definitely be visible and drives me crazy.

[olimtree]

Now I sprayed him with silver spray. While I do like how he looks, I'm uncertain regarding the texture. But the next step is painting him :)

[olimtree]

Project I am working on at the moment :)

[olimtree]

There are 36 dragons that I need to finish. I would be done with them by March if I didn't have homework :(

[olimtree]

it's a new year in the Gregorian calendar and my New Year's resolution is to consider cannibalism

#plansfor2025