Hello, I’ve been sculpting in a blender for a few months. And It’d be great if I could get some insights on my progress so far
My goal is to eventually create a full character, but right now I’m focusing on head anatomy. The problem is, no matter how much time I put in, I don’t feel like I’m improving. I’ve been stuck at the same level for a while, and I don’t trust my process to believe that just making a lot of heads will lead to progress.
From what I’ve learned (mostly from Flipped Normal), getting immediate feedback after each session is crucial. But I didn’t know where to find that kind of feedback, and I don't want to flood any places with unfinished work. At the same time, I worry that if I rely too much on feedback, I won’t develop the skill to spot my own mistakes.
It’s frustrating how long it takes me to get to a certain point with sculpting. I’m painfully slow, and I don’t even know where I’m wasting my time. It takes me 6–7 hours just to block out, and that’s if I don’t forget the ears. And even after all that time, it’s not anything particularly complex, just the basics. Sometimes, I spend two whole days just trying to match a reference, and it still wasn’t even close. and sometimes, I spend 10 hours tweaking a sculpt, constantly adjusting proportions, observing plane changes, and refining shapes—yet it still looked off. No matter what I do, my sculpts always end up wobbly, stiff, or just wrong in ways I can’t seem to fix.
Then there are the recurring mistakes. No matter how many times I adjust the forehead, it always ends up too big or too long. I’m aware of this issues and many others, but I don’t know how to break the pattern. I’m just been stuck making the same errors over and over again.
Here are some of the examples:
Replies
One repeating element I see is that you often overemphasize the mass and distance between the upper eyelid and the eyebrow ridge. Fine for plane studies and also not impossible, but e.g. in your study of the metal portray bust it's way to voluminous.
As for the speed: Do you draw at all? Should give you a much quicker turnaround, especially to nail down proportions. And perhaps it makes sense to do plenty of generic heads first and likenesses later. The latter is incredibly hard and can be frustrating (everyone with fresh eyes can immediately tell that something is wrong, but not necessarily why). As for spotting your own mistakes, stepping away every now and then or even wait to the next day is a tried and true method (so you have those "fresh eyes" yourself). I'm not sure what's the reasoning behind getting feedback immediately, is it to speed up the process or break patterns?
Not sure if there was a miscommunication, but just in case: I was mainly referring to stepping away for a bit and returning with "fresh" eyes, especially if you catch yourself moving features around for a long time. But starting fresh now and then isn't a bad idea, either. In the first paragraph, I was mainly referring to getting more detailed feedback.
As for the mass below the eyebrow ridge, I partly misspoke (should have looked it up). I actually meant both that and the supraorbital ridge and then simply the skin and fat attached to that and overlapping the upper eyelid. That can be visible as a volume of its own or even slightly inset, but in your standard caucasian male head, which is how I would read many of your sculpts, it would be quite a distinctive feature in the way it presents e.g. in the first two rows from the top. I mainly called it out because the copy of the metal sculpt seemed to have a problem in the same area. Do you see how you put much more volume there than in the reference? (Matching the FOV might be important, too.)
The main advantage of 2D is that it's much quicker, so yes, I'd say it should help you to develop your feeling for proportions.
Regarding the sketchbook thread, there is a specific subforum for that, but unless someone says otherwise, the main one is probably better for getting feedback if you don't overdo it. And keeping it all in one thread makes more sense to me, unless you start a bigger project. But I don't make the rules.
turned out terrible, still struggling a lot blocking out the head, even started from scratch couple of times
Though one thing that keeps drawing my attention is the area between brows - it seem to be placed a little too high in some sculpts?
For the ears, it looks like light and shadow or the perspective might play tricks on you sometimes, e.g. I've never seen the depression in the Y-shaped antihelix go down as far as in your second to last model and the last one looks a bit strange from the side. The transition to the side of the cheeks looks a bit sharp, too.
Perhaps a fully fledged separate study of an ear would help to internalize the general building blocks in space without distracting from the head studies too much.
Getting the undercuts and thin bits can be tricky, but I don't have any good tips other than using a brush that excludes the back-sides where it makes sense (and one which doesn't if you want to move complete bits around) and use masks. That's for surface based sculpting, though. Volume based or dynamic surface sculpting should give you more freedom if the resolution is high enough.
But for generic heads, all of those seem fine. Comparing to the reference might help to identify recurring patterns. E.g. the philtrum looks quite pronounced in many of your models. Absolutely possible, but if it's not in the reference, then you might add it without noticing. Then again, this might be more something for likeness studies.
Reference used:
One thing i'd focus on is the Zygomatic arch, and how it leads into the forehead. At some point along the forehead a plane change happens, where the skull has a ridge, and then that part is covered in muscle.
I'd also focus on really smoothing out the fatty bits above the eye, as they are a bit wobbly atm.
For next steps, i would say, throw some colours/tone on the face, and blockout the hair. At some point, it gets really hard to judge head sculpts in pure isolation, and giving some local values really helps you pinpoint what's missing. Likenesses don't usually lock in until you do that.
terrible fever today, trying to make in the mileage
I tried to make some change for the ear of [2/7 head] but I barely made it worse
I think it'll take more tries for me to get it right
Probably a bit exaggerated, but perhaps this helps. Pretty nitpicky anyway.
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I think you are being a bit harsh on yourself tbh, you are doing a lot better than struggling. it might still take a lot of effort atm, but you are getting good results.
I'm suggesting to move onto the next step, mostly because it will re-contextualize these stages, and hopefully you can see you aren't as far off as you think you are. But it's your call.
references used:
+ I tried to make a bit more change to the ear of [2/7 head], pushed the tail of antihelix towards the helix and added more volume to the helix