Brand new artist, practice tips wanted
node
I’m brand new to sculpting with 10 hours of experience and 2 polymodeling practices and 1 sculpt practice. I’m wondering how to “practice correctly”.
What I’m wondering is should I focus on strictly sculpting floating heads every time I sit down to practice as a complete beginner or should I try varying pieces of a head such as making eyes, lips, noses, etc? Is it bad to focus on heads as a brand new artist? Should I also try to sculpt creatures or bodies or animals or random objects and make dedicated times to practice a variety of subjects?
what are some best practice tips you can offer to someone with mere hours of experience?
Replies
10 hours man, just chill and look what's fun to you. What you need is repetition and experience, this early it doesn't matter if you get that from just doing pieces of the head or whole heads.
You sound like an overthinker like myself 😁
What @Neox said, just sculpt whats fun and enjoy the process since you're extremely new to it, and don't overthink about what you must grind on so early. Once you get to a stage after completing a few projects, you can really identify what your strengths/weaknesses are, and then that would lead you to your answer of what you would need to practice.
The hardest (and most rewarding) subject to sculpt is human anatomy. Possibly because it is so intimately recognisable. This is just my opinion, but I would start practicing whole figures. The same with drawing, you see a great character, but the feet are incorrect. Start by making sculpting sketches. In the beginning stop yourself from going into too much detail. Check out concept character art roughs for an idea of what I mean. As a reference I like DAZ, it's free and a pretty flexible starting point, and its super to have on a screen next to you when you work.
First concentrate on sketching (in 3d) generic naked adults around 25. Once you have those down you can move onto generic teens and kids, finally aged and if you want infirmed.
your progress will be measured in years. so just make a habit of enjoying what you are doing.
"First concentrate on sketching (in 3d) generic naked adults around 25. Once you have those down you can move onto generic teens and kids, finally aged and if you want infirmed."
this is so super oddly specific.
also studying from daz? i'd suggest to cut out artistic interpretations as much as you can unless that look is what you actually want to recreate,
Would you guys suggest someone that comes from a history of 2D illustration, realism and then stylized, focus on creating and studying realistic human sculpts strictly before moving onto stylized characters or would it be fine to focus on stylized characters if that’s what I want my end result to be?
I just like to make sure I do helpful and productive studying from the get go rather than jumping the gun and building habits that’ll be hard to break later on and will cause needless time in correcting.
you could try making characters just with what you know now, and if everybody is telling you the work is bad because you don't understand anatomy, then learn it.
That way you know exactly what the problem is and where to focus, and if there is not a problem you dont waste time trying to fix one.
@Neox this is so super oddly specific.
also studying from daz? i'd suggest to cut out artistic interpretations as much as you can unless that look is what you actually want to recreate,
Not at all the way it was meant, Just use the app as a reference. Don't reproduce the figures.