Sculpting the Forms of the Facial Mass
Now let’s move on to sculpting the facial mass:
1. Carve away the shape of the nasal cavity from the front. Now move to a side view and tug the area between the nose and eyes back to create the ridge of the nasal bone. This is an important landmark in the profile, so be sure to introduce it now to avoid flattening of the face (Figure 2.34).
2. From the side, tug the cheekbones back with the Move brush.
3. From the front, adjust the angle from the cheekbones up to the corners of the eye sockets so they taper back as they move up. This area is called the zygomatic process and is visible as the lateral upper corner of the eye socket on the finished head (Figure 2.35).
Make sure the mouth area has a slight curvature to it. Consider this a cylinder shape on the head. This is important because later when you add lips to the head, they will lie more naturally on the face if they are sculpted around a curved base (Figure 2.36).
Figure 2.34 Adding the nasal cavity and nasal bone
Figure 2.35 Adjusting the angle of the cheekbones to the brow ridge
Figure 2.36 Barrel of mouth seen from the front
4. Using the Standard brush with ZSub on, carve away the hollows at the sides of the head (the temples). This region is called the temporal fossa, and we’ll fill it with an important muscle in the next section.
5. Don’t worry about the rough surface—we’ll refine that later. For now, focus on the integrity of the shapes you want to create. Remember that these rake marks will be refined later with a combination of smaller, finer rake strokes and the Smooth brush.
Using the Move brush, pull the underside of the cheekbones in to create the deep hollows seen there. This area is empty on the skull, but in this case tuck these faces deep into the head (Figure 2.37).
6. The glabella is a raised trapezoidal shaped formation between the brows. It wedges into the nasal bone from between the superciliary arches and creates the shape of the center of the brows (Figure 2.38). Mask the bridge of the nose so you can create a hard line between this form and the one we’ll now add. Create the shape of the glabella by sculpting against the mask (Figure 2.39).
7. Using the Move brush, create the ear hole, or auditory meatus. Remember that this hole in the side of the skull lies just behind the halfway line between the front and back halves (you can see it in Figure 2.24). It should be placed just below the end of the zygomatic bone. Using Move, hold down the Alt key to move in and out from the point under the brush. This constrains the movement and makes it easy to slide the faces into the head, creating the deep hole.
Figure 2.37 Cheekbone hollow pulled back into the head
Figure 2.38 Glabella on a human skull
Figure 2.39 Roughing in the glabella
8. From beneath the auditory meatus comes the mastoid process (Figure 2.40). This is a small mound protrusion just behind the jaw. Using the Move brush again, pull the mastoid process down from the auditory meatus. The mastoid process will serve as a landmark later on when we sculpt the neck; this is the insertion of the most prominent neck muscle, the sternomastoid.
9. Delineate the cheekbone from the jawbone with the Standard brush set to ZSub.
Carve away between these two shapes to help separate them. Begin to sculpt the shape of the mandible or jawbone.
10. Once again, check proportions between the halves, adjusting the face to compensate for the angles of the profile. You may use the mask technique, transpose measuring, or both to find the midline of the head. I take this chance to correct the angles in the face as well as the length of the jawbone (Figure 2.41).
Figure 2.40 Mastoid process, beneath the ear hole
Figure 2.41 Checking proportions with masking on one side of the head as well as the transpose measure line
The zygomatic bone should be the widest part of the skull when looking from the front. To move this part out from the rest of the sculpture without disturbing the other forms, mask the zygomatic bone, then invert the mask by Ctrl-clicking somewhere off the model on the document window. Using the Move brush, pull the form out. Remember to hold down Alt while you use the Move brush to pull the faces out in the direction of the surface normal.
Check the width from the bottom as well as other angles to ensure it is correct (Figure 2.42).
11. Select the Rake brush and lower the draw size. This has the effect of making the rake smaller and the strokes finer. Using this tool, crosshatch the strokes already on the model. Crosshatching strokes helps to bring together the forms sculpted so far (Figure 2.43).
If you use the rakes with ZAdd on clay, add in the recessed areas first. This reduces the roughness of the surface and begins to tie the shapes together.
Figure 2.42 Pulling out the zygomatic bone from the side as well as from the bottom view
Figure 2.43 The rake strokes on the mouth area have been crosshatched.
Figure 2.44 Final skull
12. Using rakes over the entire skull, resolve the forms to a point that the major shapes are clearly defined. Since we’ll add muscle and skin over this skull, don’t be concerned with taking it to a smooth finish. We won’t add details like individual teeth since we just need the rounded shape of the mouth to serve as a basis for lips later. If you want to take the skull to a finer level of finish, use the Smooth brush with a BrushMod setting of 100 to smooth the recessed areas and reduce the rake marks on the surface. Figure 2.44 shows the skull to this point.
This skull remains rough since we are only interested in the form and proportions, not the surface quality. If you want to refine the surface further, use the Polish brushes to reinforce the planes of the skull. Figure 2.45 shows the skull after a pass with the H Polish brush. In the next step, this skull will guide us in placing the muscles of the face as we work toward a realistic human head from a sphere.
Figure 2.45 The skull with refined planes
