These are two examples of the several attempts I have tried, to sculpt a Tatzel cat, or Dragon cat. I have never been that happy with any of the designs I have done -I wanted them to be … I dunno … prettier, less creepy, more catlike or something. I think it is the long neck that bothers me.
The sketch is a photoshop drawing I did of a real sculpture. It is a tiny sculpture intended to be cast in pewter, and I couldn’t get the stupid camera to focus properly, so I drew over the out-of-focus image and added some details that had broken off of the sculpture over the years.
The three images of the head from different views are all of the very first gargoyle-type creature we cast. It is a test piece that I used to see what the “stone” texture would look like painted. I never made the Tatzel cat gargoyle, I thought he was a little too scary looking!
Tatzel cats (or Tatzel worms, or Tatzel wyrms, or several other spellings) are “real” mythological creatures. If you Google them you’ll find some images. None of the ” real historical ” tatzel cats are very nice looking, so there is lots of room for improvement! I keep trying, maybe someday I’ll succeed making a paint your own dragon cat.
Like I said on facebook, I think that the sketch is really great…especially since I can see it better here on your blog. My thoughts are that you could create something similar to your kirins with some strategic scales, and keeping the neck shorter, then add some dragon wings.
You could also set in some Reptile eyes like the ones I cast for my sculpts to make them appear more ‘Dragon Like’.
see here: http://cozmicdreamer.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2ljp88