Whew, it's been a long, long, long, long......long time since I posted anything here on these forums, but I digress.
With all due respect, you need to keep learning how to use the maya tools before you try to tackle a project like that in Maya. However, the easiest way to do it is to sculpt it with an app like mudbox or ZBrush. Otherwise, doing it in maya requires the painstaking and time consuming task of edge looping, splitting poly's and merging/ welding vertices( if necessary ) to model the detail.
The reference pic you included requires an intermediate level of experience with maya at the least to achieve.
Hope this helps out a little.
Last edited by THX1138; 22-08-2021 at 02:44 AM.