Serpent Tail's Scales

Mood Fabrics, yeah, so they have this amazing selection of sequined fabrics. Things I never knew could exist. The month before, I had found an exquisite fine scale circular sequined piece there to use for the Mermaid's tail and intended to use it for the serpent sage's as well. But when I saw this larger fish scale like material in black all my alarm bells went off, had to have it. It was $80/yard so I bought the minimum of 1/4 yard for $20 and it covered his whole tail perfectly.

Above you can see some of my initial experiments in how I will be adding colors to it once installed on the puppet. Below shows how I applied the material to the puppet tail using needle and thread and Nova's super gel medium, pinned in place to dry.
Because it's fabric, it flexes beautifully with every direction and movement the serpent tail makes. I could never have placed each scale with such mathematical precision as this find has allowed. I used joss paper cut into lozenge-shaped hexagons for under-belly scales.

Upcoming posts will show how his human-half upper-body has been sculpted and head was finished....

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