Edit 23rd August 2016 - link to a slide show of the finished piece......astounding......
https://www.facebook.com/nickbibby.sculpture/videos/1016386125126370/
Edit 15th August 2016 - Nick has just posted an 'almost finished video' of the Dragon so I thought I'd add it to the top of this post.......you should still read the rest though!
One of the greats of the old school 'hobby' sculptors, Nick Bibby started working for Asgard Miniatures in the later 70s before moving on to Citadel Miniatures, Games Workshop and Ral Partha. A number of his fantasy sculpts are in my collection, one of my firm favorites being a 25mm and 75mm Conan the Barbarian for Asgard.
An early giant also for Asgard....one I still need 'desperately'....
A favourite dragon.... along with rider and saddle....fortunately these are my own copies...
A later classic of the genre, his Spined Dragon, for Citadel (around 1988) is much sought after today and commands quite high prices on eBay....(photo c/o Stuff of Legends)
In the 90s he moved from fantasy subjects into sculpting real life.......and moving forward a millennium or so......well, about 25 years....Nick turned his mind back to dragons following his career in sculpting a multitude of subjects for bronze casting....his skills have been honed to a fine degree and, barring the potential 5 figure costing, I would certainly aim to own one of these which should, hopefully, be available sometime in the Summer of 2016. All the pictures below remain Nick's copyrite and are used with his permission here. His website and Facebook links are towards the bottom of the page.
I've tried to put the images in some form of chronological order so you can get some appreciation of the skill and effort that Nick puts into his work....
Here is a video of the dragon armature and wing membranes....
'The clever folks at Pangolin Editions foundry laser scanning my Firedrake, dragon maquette, prior to casting it into bronze. I will use the scan data as part of the enlargement process, should I get asked to sculpt a "life size", monumental, version of this piece'....
A short video of the finished "Firedrake" (minus the tall rectangular column upon which the finished bronze sculpture will stand)
The sculpt being teased from the mold prior to casting in bronze.....
Once the bronze casting has been taken out of the mold there is a long, long job of finishing ....unlike pewter and lead, this process is very labor intensive.....
Later pieces......
Video of the completed Griffin.....
Video of the Midgard Serpent, Jörmungandr
One of Nick's Facebook pages is here. You don't need to 'do' Facebook to enjoy.
A pictorial catalogue of some of his works courtesy of Pangolin Studios here.
Of course it's well worth popping along to his website to have a peruse of his genius and maybe commission a piece.....
Nick just advised me that the dragon will be unveiled (alongside the Midgard Serpent and Griffin) at his next one man show, this October, at Sladmore Contemporary, Bruton Place, Mayfair, London.
As always, thoughts and q's to enquiries@deartonyblair.co.uk
3 comments:
Wow! That's amazing!!!!
I stumbled across Nicks' life size sculpture work a few years ago. He's an amazing sculpture that's for sure, but to be able to return to this size of scale after all these years, and then bang this out! It's incredibly....definitely up there with the Spined Dragon IMHO.
Thankyou so much for sharing this :)
Amazing stuff..... it is still instantly recognisable as a Nick Bibby sculpt, even though I have only ever seen his brilliant Asgard figures. Nice to see the man himself too.
Incredible. I was blown away by every step. Beautiful model very skilled work!
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