Sculpting: Gestural Sculpting

I know this blog has been somewhat void of updates for a while now. I hit a small bump in life, but updates will be more constant from now on out.

So, from my most recent post about the sculpture project. As mentioned before I completely scrapped the previous syllabus of doing 5 weeks of multiple speed sculptures. I am obviously still working towards efficiency, but now I am aiming more towards actual anatomical accuracy and correctness. I would rather do things right than do them fast and wrong. Also the matte painting is now eliminated from the schedule. I really want to get this right. More on my plans for the future of this project in a separate post. For now, I will bring things up to date.

I have been looking at this much like the little bit of drawing I have done in my life; I have been attempting to do some basic sculpts just to get a feel of how to appropriate the form of the face properly onto my base. I remember in my anatomical drawing class (and in the one drawing class I took before that) they would constantly have us begin class by doing gestural drawing in order to warm up. Gestural drawing can be simply defined as quick, loose drawing where you are meant to block out the basic form of an object quickly and simply. I decided to follow through my initial sculpting attempts like this because placing the masses of the face proportionally is by far my largest struggle. All the projects I have done in ZBrush so far I have started with a base mesh, that had the mass laid out. Adding detail is something I am accustomed to, I just need to learn to shape out the face proportionally for now.

So to start, I decided to do a few experiments. These are in no particular order.

One of my initial attempts at just positioning everything

Just concentrating on the lips, a big problem area for me

Another attempt, more lipwork, still poor proportions

A better attempt of capturing the mass from a side view, much more proportionate

A complete exaggeration of the placement of mass on the face, as an exersize and just to get a feel for things

A strong focus on proportions, focusing on the shape of the head And being very minimal with the details

These are my initial experiments and quick gestural sculpts. Since I lack experience when it comes to these things they took me considerably longer than a 5 minute gestural drawing, but I believe theyre a step in the right direction.