Feeling stuck as an aspiring sculptor. I need thorough advice. I'd really appreciate help. (Anatomy)

Quxera

Hello friends. I am an aspiring sculptor with no art background whose aim is to make realistic busts. I have been sculpting as a hobby for 3 years now. I have been taking it seriously for the last year (3-4 hours of sculpting nearly every day) and now I am feeling extremely stuck to a point where I am just considering quitting. I feel like I am missing something fundamental about sculpting. Unfortunately, I can't take mentorships because I can't afford them. damn inflation

The images below aren't necessarily the best I can do but they represent the average sculpts.

I use references. Both real photos and interpretations such as planes of the face and alike.
I have used scans to copy 1:1 before and they help quite a lot. But I don't want to be relying on scans to produce good results.

ps: If anyone is willing to jump on discord, and give advice with screen sharing on I would not say no to that. Message me if you are willing to do that.

Also besides giving a really specific critique, I am also looking for general advice regarding sculpting. What am I missing? What can you tell from the sculpts below?

Anyways, I'd really appreciate help at this point... 

edit: I have just realized I have never mentioned anatomy... This post is mostly about anatomy.. 

kanga

I can't tell from your post, but have you been doing male heads for 3 years? If so that would drive me nuts as well. I am the reverse of you in that. For me its insanely fun to take a character from a sketch all the way through to a game engine and having it respond to controller commands and move in an environment suited to it.

Looks like you are doing male head high poly start meshes that are restricted to zBrush. Its not clear from your post what your end goa; is.

I reckon at least you should look at whole body anatomy and start with generics but alternate between male and female. Then you can introduce anatomic variations (age, fitness). If you wanted to be ultimately flexible include ethnicity. Also look at using zspheres to start a character and give you the flexibility of freely increasing and decreasing sub D levels to help you control  surfaces (which is really what it is all about).

It might also make life more interesting for you to look beyond zB and see how a free 3D app like Blender could help you. But then again that depends on your end goal.

Quxera

kanga said:

I can't tell from your post, but have you been doing male heads for 3 years? If so that would drive me nuts as well. I am the reverse of you in that. For me its insanely fun to take a character from a sketch all the way through to a game engine and having it respond to controller commands and move in an environment suited to it.

Looks like you are doing male head high poly start meshes that are restricted to zBrush. Its not clear from your post what your end goa; is.

I reckon at least you should look at whole body anatomy and start with generics but alternate between male and female. Then you can introduce anatomic variations (age, fitness). If you wanted to be ultimately flexible include ethnicity. Also look at using zspheres to start a character and give you the flexibility of freely increasing and decreasing sub D levels to help you control  surfaces (which is really what it is all about).

It might also make life more interesting for you to look beyond zB and see how a free 3D app like Blender could help you. But then again that depends on your end goal.

Thank you for replying.

Oh no, I want to make game characters and have been working on them as well. I have done some work before.
 https://www.artstation.com/quxera
You can see some of the stuff I have tried.

But I want to master the face and the body. 

carvuliero

Quitting is always viable option if you dont have fun with it anymore or not willing to increase your efforts

There is a saying "little knowledge in the right time can make all the difference " I think thats whats missing if you sculpt every day for x amount of time without much improvement then you just repeat yourself not learning not adding new knowledge and obviously not improving

My suggestion is to take a short break get a prospective rethink what you been doing what you could do and what you should be doing , make a list with priorities -> analyse your work and learning strategies

As I said above I think you are stuck because you have reach the point of your current understanding of the subject matter and you need either different point of view or new understanding .Probably best approach for you in this case is for someone with a bit more knowledge to sit with you and explain things that you have problems with ,,that be fastest and least painful or you could work on your own on pretty much every aspect of head sculpting and improve element by element

Ok think about it made a decision if you choose the hard road let me know I might be able to help but you have to serious about it

Quxera

carvuliero said:

Quitting is always viable option if you dont have fun with it anymore or not willing to increase your efforts

There is a saying "little knowledge in the right time can make all the difference " I think thats whats missing if you sculpt every day for x amount of time without much improvement then you just repeat yourself not learning not adding new knowledge and obviously not improving

My suggestion is to take a short break get a prospective rethink what you been doing what you could do and what you should be doing , make a list with priorities -> analyse your work and learning strategies

As I said above I think you are stuck because you have reach the point of your current understanding of the subject matter and you need either different point of view or new understanding .Probably best approach for you in this case is for someone with a bit more knowledge to sit with you and explain things that you have problems with ,,that be fastest and least painful or you could work on your own on pretty much every aspect of head sculpting and improve element by element

Ok think about it made a decision if you choose the hard road let me know I might be able to help but you have to serious about it

I am more than happy to take the hard road if you are willing to sit down with me and explain my shortcomings.

imslow

it appears you spent most of the time sculpting features and furrows, even though as anatomy master Scott Eaton said, the human face is like 70% skull. take a step back and see images of faces from further away or from your phone, you'll see that features really only play an auxiliary role and that A well developed, obviously-tellable skull is what the face is mostly made of.

also, it doesnt look like there was a real-person or design theme behind your faces, and that youre probably looking at ecorches and planes-of-head images and attempting to conjure up a face with those information; which would be a horrible mistake that i used to do, that took my mentor a long time to correct. so thats probably a missing thing in your sculpts. have something of a theme/design choice, real model, age etc in mind first, all the knowledge and anatomical stuffs only act as tools to bring them out.


i am still a beginner too and have been sculpting the face for 3 months or less, so please dont take me seriously LOL. just hoping i could be of help