Sculpture: Cobra/Dragon Hybrid 6

I believe i started this project last summer and a year later i finally feel like i'm getting somewhere! I'll admit i missed working on this one. Links to the previous project posts: Cobra/Dragon 4 Cobra/Dragon 5

 So, with this one i started with the tail. Initially i had in mind to add spikes to the end of the tail so that they would be a continuation of the spine spikes, but didn't end up like that. I went with a...i shall call it a spade tail! I cut it out of some random cardboard paper that i then wrapped with paper mache as seen below.

 Somewhere along this step I added the cylindrical pieces that you can see in the image below. These are of the same kind i used for one of the tomes i did. Made out of some air drying clay i had. Hot glued these guys along the belly scales and I then filled some of the bigger gaps around these pieces with joint compound. If your wondering, why joint compound, it's simply what i had on hand!

To further get rid of the crevices in between these cylindrical pieces i went in and glued pieces of paper towels on top of them. Glued the pieces and then covered them with some more glue...

 Then i got around to making some of that awesome paper clay and used it to patch up some imperfections along the tail as well as to finish up detailing the spade tail.

 Out of the same air drying clay i made the spikes that would run along the spine...Turned out to be a bad idea! The air drying clay, i found to be a little to fragile but too late for that. I'll keep that in mind for any upcoming projects...Anyways....hot glued these guys along my baby's spine...

The central spikes along the actual spine I made them slightly larger than the left and right  rows. And all of the spikes i made them go smaller as they reached the tail and head portions.

 Out of some old shirt i cut out long-ish rectangles that i then proceeded to dip into white glue. Then came yet, another time consuming task of placing these cloth pieces around the spikes. This would be the dark portions you see along the spine...

After this step come the triangular scales on the tail and even more time consuming work on the other half. Definitely something to look forward to!