Sculpting faces is very time consuming and something that I work on throughout the entire sculpting process. However, before I begin another area of the sculpture I like to get a good foundation for the face. I use to save the face for last only to discover that I ended throwing the entire sculpture off when the face was completed. The problem is that the face would end up too big or two small for my piece. I just recently started sculpting the face first and I think it has made a huge improvement in my overall work.
My goal is to knock out at least 80% of the face before I begin another area of the sculpture. I will continue to bounce back to the face during the sculpting process. Even though the majority of the work is done up front, I still end up finishing up the face around the end of the piece. However the foundation was already built so the only thing left at the end is perfecting (to the best of my ability) the little details.
* This sculpture is created with Super Sculpey.
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When sculpting faces I like to first block them out and then build out all the little features. In this pic I am starting to build out the shape of the brow. If you look at the picture you will see the two balls of clay above the nose. I will use these to help define the shape above the eyes. I simply add a little clay, do some sculpting, step back and see if I need to add more clay to build out the shape. |
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Building out the forehead now. |
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I have already mentioned this in several tutorials but to repeat always periodically check your sculpture in a mirror. The mirror is a great tool to use to make sure there are not any symmetry issues. |
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I have smoothed out the face with alcohol and it is starting to take shape now. I still have a lot of work to do on all of the facial features but I am beginning to get an idea of what my tribal lady is going to look like. |
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Time to add the eyes. I am going to sculpt the eyes differently on this piece then the Fiddler series but the beginning process is the same. |
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I build out the eyes using most of the steps in the sculpting eyes tutorial from the Fiddler series. The key difference between this sculpture and the Fiddler is that I will not create a hole for the pupil and the iris. I am going to just create a hole for the pupil and I carve out a circle in the clay to represent the iris. |
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