This shows the scale of the model, I did quite a bit more work on this today, and also pressed out the shield which is laying on my work bench now uncovered to firm up a bit before I mess with it further.

And adding 2 more pics tonight, with the shield now in place and the forearms and paws started.

I left the model most of the week to get firmer so it won’t need as much if any external support soon, it is much more stable tonight so I added more clay to the head and neck, now the nose and the top-knot are very close to where they should be, that leaves the rest of the head to model according to the position of those.

The chest top is where that should be, and the top of the shield will extend about 3″ above that.

The shoulder does not yet have the leg modelled on as I want to avoid putting on any relatively thin attachments for now as those will tend to get firm and start drying out rapidly in comparison to the rest.

I believe now I will work on modelling the shield as this will need a little time to firm up before it could be stood up on it’s bottom and be attached to the lion’s chest, at which point the legs and paws could be added.

There is nearly 600# of clay in this model now, the shield, front legs and wings will probably use around 200# more, so as it stands now it appears I estimated the amount of clay required astonishingly close.