Pin the tail on the raptor

I made an armature for the Skyefigure's tailfan out of masking tape, and added some aluminum foil for filler to the tail.

I rolled clay into flat, thin sheets again with a round glass jar, and covered the tail with them. Then I cut out excess clay, flattened the clay a bit more towards the edges, then cut it into shape again, back and forth for quite a while, and did my best to blend the seams together. I shaped the big flight feathers using the silicon brush tool a bit, but mostly a sewing pin (it's starting to become my favorite sculpting tool).

Speaking of tools, I used these:

• silicon brush and sewing pin, as mentioned
• scissors for cutting away some of the biggest chunks of clay from the edges
• a tiny blade from my craft cutter thing. It has a pen-like handle, but I didn't attach it for this, it felt like I had more precise control this way since I couldn't put the tail onto a surface to cut it
• the piece of plastic straw again, to use as feather-outline stamp
• another improvised tool: a piece of the 1mm wire I used in the figure's armature, bent into a little loop. Good for drawing the more fur-like texture I want the feathers on the underside of the tail to have
• a toothpick to apply liquid clay with (there was a pool of it on that piece of clay)
• also, the surface I'm working on is a glass photo frame. I had a printer paper on it at first, but it leeches the clay, which can be useful if the clay needs to be made less soft and sticky, or an inconvenience if it doesn't. I think I'm better off without
• also also, the clay I'm using is Fimo Soft. Mostly because it was the most easily available.

Details! One of the ruffled feathers at top of the base of the tail is from a batch of feathers I made separately and baked, attached with liquid clay. Seems to stay put.

Then bake! Then wonder what next.