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Detailing the face

Posted by goregt On March - 21 - 2007

Detailing the face

1. Pupils – pupils are really easy to do. I just take a pointed sculpting tool and make little circles into the eyes. You want to build out the pupils before you add the eyelids to the eyes. I’m still not done with the eyes

2. Eyelids – roll very thin snakes and lay one on the top portion of the eye and the other snake on the bottom of the eye. Play with their placement until you get the look you are looking for. Using one of my sculpting tools I push or blend the edges of the eyelids into the face

3. Lips – The individual lips are created by drawing a horizontal line into the clay. Once I separate out the top and bottom of the lips I then bulk out the lips by adding small amounts of clay. I keep bulking out the lips until I get a shape that I am looking for (if you do too much bulking just take a little away – pretty simple step but takes some time to do). Once I get a shape I am happy with I then add little faint vertical lines to the upper and lower lips (look at your lips in the mirror to see the little lines they contain).

4. Ears – At this stage I have only added small lumps of clay to represent where my ears will be placed.

5. Horns – the horns are pretty easy. They are just large snakes or cylinders of clay that I have twisted into a shape that I like. The horns are still pretty rough at this stage so I will be building them more out in the future.

6. Spikes on the cheeks – Just little miniature horns that I added to the cheeks. I added three spikes to each cheek. I’m still playing with the design so it is hard to say if they will stay or go. I believe in experimenting with what pops in your head and this is a good example on how I make a sculpture up as I move along in the sculpting process.

7. Hair – I really only added a bulk hair for the chin and the top of the head. I’ll cover detailing the hair in a future lesson (most likely the next lesson)

Next lesson Sculpting hair

Previous lesson Blocking out the face

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5 Responses to “Detailing the face”

  1. Sheri says:

    I have began attempting to sculpt about a year ago. I find your site to be helpful. My questions, I am for the 1st time using styrofoam for the armature. I have found out I do not like it. But, I am too far w/ my sculpt now not finish.
    I just baked my leg, which was sculpted over styrofoam.
    Do you have any suggestions or hints to help me w/ this process.
    I have to have my sculpt done by April 1, and need all the help and suggestions possible. I know I can sculpt and bake in sections, so am running into a bit of a problem not ruining one area of my sculpt when I satrt on another area.
    I would appreciate any help.
    Thank You! I found sculpting help is hard to find.

  2. Gerald says:

    Hi Sheri,

    I’ve never used Styrofoam before so I don’t have any experience with it. However, I have built some lousy armatures in my days so I know how to work around armature issues.

    How far along is the rest of the sculpt, excluding the leg? If it is not that far then I recommend attaching the leg to another armature. However, if you have made a lot of progress in the other parts of the sculpture then i would recommend a partial bake. For example, I had a situation once where I was attaching a leg but the armature was not holding that well. I took a layer of clay and made a rough shape of the bottom of my leg, baked only that area with a heat gun, let it cool and then added additional clay over my “clay armature”. I have a section on partial baking on my website if you have not seen it yet.

    Hope that gives you some help.

    Sincerely,

    Gerald Gore

  3. julio says:

    i have a question. How do you blend in the clay when you want to define the features?

  4. goregt says:

    Julio,

    I use alcohol with a paint brush to blend and smooth out the facial features. The key is to first design or sculpt out the individual features and then use the alcohol in the final stage to blend everything together.

    – Gerald

  5. Darin says:

    I’m getting small tidbits of info(is it tidbits?) Are you ever going to make a full tutorial?

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