Year of the Dragon
Kung Hei Fat Choi! This is the Year of the Water Dragon and I had the great fortune to collaborate with the M Restaurant Group 2012 Diary and paint the dragon page. I must confess that although my mock up was in 3D, it was still pretty basic – painting, cutting and glueing images upright in layers. Fortunately, the paper engineers of the diary worked their magic and now it opens up like a bonafide pop-up, with water dragon noises included!
Inspiration: I have always enjoyed M Diaries’ creativity, and inventive designs, so I wanted to create something fun, and, of course, colourful. I made my dragon bigger than my usual dragons, for practical design reasons and I placed a pearl, a symbol of potentiality, in its mouth because symbolically dragons have often been portrayed with one. To some, though, the round object is also described as the sun, or the moon, or the symbol of rolling thunder, or seen as an egg representing the influence of nature.
I went overboard with the waves (excuse the pun) because one can never have too many waves and the Water Dragon was the perfect excuse. I added the golden talon claw popping out of the water to add both a bit of humour, and a reminder of the dragon’s strength.
Here is my version:
Jean’s pop up version of the Water Dragon
And here is the M Diary’s successful transformation:
Pop-up Water Dragon for the M Restaurant 2012 Diary
For further details you can check out their website: