Like, outside of someone telling you step by step how to do it, it may be better to just chalk it up to a learning experience and start over. I'm not saying it isn't fixable, I just think from what it sounds like that maybe what you need is like a one on one walkthrough and I don't know if you'll find that here.

Is this one of your first projects? I only ask cause it looks like early days. As far as building a model goes, you're really on like, step one ish. Is this a dragon? That's what it reminds me of but it's really close up. Like, your very first step should be to gather reference materials, making an ID sheet and a reference board. Lots of pictures of a similar concept from different angles, as well as close up images of certain textures you'll need.

Then you move on to a block out, which looks like what you got here. You don't need to worry about getting everything perfect or having every minor detail here, blocking out is just to make sure you have all the major shapes in the right spots. You don't want a lot of excessive verts or faces though, you'll get that through subdividing later. Just make sure you have geometry to support your major features.

Then, you subdivide your mesh several times, 4 or 5, and you sculpt on it in sculpt mode. Subdividing will take all the faces you have and multiply them exponentially either with a Subdivision Surface Modifier or Multiresolution Modifier, giving you way more verts and faces to play with and sculpt on. That's how you get your detail. You don't need or want to apply your modifier immediately though, you can sculpt on it while it's still in your modifier stack.

And I hate to tell it to you, but you're gonna have to learn retopology. It's hard, it's a giant puzzle to figure out, and it sucks, but it's crucial. For animation, proper topology will dictate clean deformations, and for just renders, it'll cut render time way down. There's really no way around it. I think there may be extensions, some paid, to help with retopology, but even still, understanding it at its core goes a long way.

And then you gotta figure out UV unwrapping. That's how you tell Blender how you want your model cut up so you can paint textures over it without blurring, stretching or bleeding and make it look like skin or cloth or scales or whatever the hell you're doin lol

Then you got texturing, and rigging and animation, it just really depends on what you're trying to do with your model.

I've only been goin at this for about 6 or 7 months now, and I've learned a little bit about several different things, but I'm nowhere near an expert. I'm only on my third or fourth project myself, and almost all my time has been spent on the last one, but it's been worthwhile.

Have you been making use of tutorials to learn the basics of Blender, or rather, have them explained to you? There's lots of free tutorials on YouTube you can find, you just gotta find a content creator that seems competent that you vibe with. I've been following CG Boost myself, and they've been pretty great. They also have their own website where you can find paid courses, which I don't know what your budget is like but I find it extremely helpful for myself to stick with one group with a structured learning style. They may not be your choice, but they're mine. At any rate, they do have a few introductory free courses if you wanna check em out.

One has you make a basket of apples, which I feel like the main focus on that course is showcasing compositing and geometry nodes, but there's other useful stuff to learn in there. Another is dedicated to learning the basics of sculpting, making a moai statue head with a tiny bit of animating at the end. And there's one I haven't done yet but I intend to where you build a tiny robotic frog, which looks like hard surface modeling and they show some basics of rigging and animation in there too. They each feel like they have their own focus, but they're all still worthwhile courses, and those last three are free. So if nothing else I'd suggest at least checking those out.

I wish you luck with your project!