It depends pretty much on how much time you have, how dexterous you are and I think how stubborn you are.

Those who have managed some pretty fantastic results along these lines are:

TurManveru with:

Troll Toll

He also did a griffin with this method:

Griffin

then there's Claymor with his Merlin:

Merlin

The master (In my opinion) at this sort of thing is Humorix:

Spheres Day Out IV: The Dragon Slayer

and

using metaballs and spheres

And tjohn did an elephant with metaballs:

Metelephant

But yeah, other programs are probably much easier, zbrush if you can afford it, is very good at allowing you to do things like wrinkles and other in-depth (and high polygon) modelling.

Measure your mind's height
by the shade it casts.
Robert Browning (Paracelsus)

Fran's Freestuff

http://franontheedge.blogspot.com/

http://www.FranOnTheEdge.com