I am trying to sculpt this human face in my nomad sculpt, but could replicate only about 40 -45 percent, i am posting to get some tips on how can i make the model look more realistic.
Any tips, suggestions are welcomed.
- learner
Thank you 
Learn from Character Artists like
Frank Tzeng
And Hossein Diba
Unless youāre some kind of savant, making a realistic face, just like with every other form of art out there, just takes practice for most of us normal people.
One thing you can try is to break up the face into bite sized pieces. The face as a whole is a combination of numerous shapes that come together in many ways. Start anywhere you feel most comfortable. Get a single reference image of an eye, an ear, a nose, a mouth, etc. and try to replicate it. In order to achieve realism, you need to replicate what is real. It likely wonāt come out perfect the first time, which is why you do it again and again and again. Then find another image of the same area and practice that one over and over. There isnāt just one kind of eye or nose out there which is why you are practicing as many of them as you can find. Yes, it takes time, but itās time very well spent. Eventually, you start to see the similarities and can just start adding in forms where you want them.
Once you feel like you have a better grasp of the parts, you can start putting them together to make the whole. This also has some areas that can be fun. Learning how the eyes flow into the nose, or how different fat deposits change the way the cheeks are formed over the mouth. There are so many more things to learn no matter how far you take it. Itās a never ending learning process. The more you enjoy it, the farther youāll go with it.
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First thing iāve noticed is youāre only using a front view for reference. You need many angles of reference all around the head, otherwise you risk the sculpt looking flat and cartoonish.
It also takes many years to make it look realistic. When I started out, I thought my work looked like a masterpiece. But as I got better, my previous works looked worse the better I got.
With every new project, I find flaws in my old projects I never noticed before. That means progression. The only way to progress is practice. And the best way to practice is to study.
Learning the human skull is the first step to realism. Learn that and you will progress much faster than blind guess work. Then you can move on to musculature, body fat and skin. Learning this will take many years.
If you donāt learn these things properly, it will take even longer. Itās hard advice but itās the truth. Iāve found watching pro sculptors doesnāt help me with my sculpts, since they make it look easy. It only serves as inspiration and technique.
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Thanks @Bossa @SporkFuMaster @CarterTG,
Thanks for your detailed answers after Reading your replies and watching videos, i infer practise is the only key. I will surely practise and come out with great results.
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Not quite. @Bossa is most correct in mentioning that ANATOMY STUDY is key.
The other suggestion to focus on details FIRST is opposite to EVERYTHING taught by ALL the art instructors in my past. ALL of them. Whether oil painting as a child, life drawing throughout adolescence or the year invested learning sculpting from Ryan Kingslienās Uartsy/Vertex courses.
If Iām to be honest, your displayed sculpt LOOKs like you jumped into details prematurely before solidly establishing a base head sculpt. It doesnāt take an online course to point outā¦ even a 70 year old sketching book from Andrew Loomis will point out certain proportion truths. Eye height, mouth height, chin width & nostril flares are the most glaring discrepancies in your sculpt.
Cobbling together piecemeal eye, nose, lip, ear details and THEN moving it around on a questionable head will be a painful way to advance, IMO. In fact, this blind method doesnāt cover anatomy truths that always needs to be checked on:
- Lower lip corners subducting into the upper lip
- Lower eyelid subducting into the upper lid
- āThe beanā at the mouth corners where certain muscles anchor
- Muzzle shape of the mouth region
Once anatomy is understood, itās the strongest foundation youāll have when aiming for likeness sculpting. All of a sudden, the MULTIPLE reference pictures you should be using will make far more sense from one angle view to the next.
Lastly, Iāll point out that those sculpting from an anatomy foundation are better capable of conveying whether thereās bone structure or face fat below the surface.
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You and I had far different instructors. I donāt have to cut open an apple to portray its existence in any manner. In the same way, I donāt need to know every blood vessel and vein to create a nose. Knowing that thereās a skull underneath only helps in certain areas. Itās never going to explain the full form of the nose (or the hundreds of types of noses out there as well as numerous other kinds of soft tissues that a skull canāt explain). It will give me the bridge, the rest is an art in many ways. I could go on with just about every other feature. Is it helpful to have that knowledge eventually? Absolutely. Iām not saying in any way that anatomy isnāt helpful, actually I did say that itās a never ending learning process. It just isnāt necessary for a beginner to start at the deep end and learn it from a doctorās perspective.
And no one stated that this is the end of the journey. Learning some forms is the start. Where they go comes next. Sure, the Loomis method is a good next step. Depends on what works best for them. Iāve looked at most of them and pick and choose what works best for me. Itās ART. There is no right or wrong way. I probably would have argued daily with these āinstructorsā of yours and in the end never learned a thing.
I know, but OP asked for ways to increase realism in his sculptures. If he wants to do that, then he absolutely must know anatomy. Anatomy and practice was what we recommended. If he wants to sculpt cartoon characters, then itās not quite as important.
He is sculpting a human portrait and anatomy study is very important for that. Shapes of noses etc are the detail aspects that arenāt as important for a beginner as the foundation of the sculpture. For portraits, itās the skull.
Without anatomy, it will never look realistic. It will be guess work instead of confident knowledge.
I know OP is a beginner, but he asked an advanced question. There is no easy way to sculpting realistic humans other than study and practice. And what better way to begin for a beginner than by learning the skull and practice sculpting it in Nomad.
And what I stated comes from more than just a couple of years of experience. After watching numerous other artists over the years trying to get better, it was never the āI just need to only study anatomyā crowd that got better first. It was those practicing the forms and not learning the names of every muscle. They were also the ones who could visually interpret their imagination a lot better because they werenāt being hindered by trying to always follow a guide book of how things are supposed to be. And once again, for the nth time, I am in no way saying that studying anatomy is a waste of time. Iāve said the opposite numerous times already. Even most of those guys eventually learned their anatomy properly in varying amounts of time. But it isnāt the only path, or a necessary first step, to get to the same destination because one curriculum decided that would be their way. Not everyone learns the same and Iām just offering a method that Iāve seen work quite well for others as well as myself.
From what you stated, by your own estimates of how I learned, I should be wholly incapable of creating a realistic human head and should only ever create cartoon sculpts of humans. But it hasnāt gone unnoticed that the two people who keep stating that anatomy is the first, and main, step to a multi year journey of memorization and study are the two that havenāt really posted the amazing examples of how that journey of study has benefited them. Now, Iām not stating that either of you are incapable of creating an absolutely incredibly realistic human head in Nomad, I just havenāt seen the evidence of these skills as nothing has been shared. I know that Iād certainly love to see some examples done with Nomad, using no reference (since obviously all that study has cemented the knowledge in your heads), if only to see where I need to get better.
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Studying and practicing is literally what we both saidā¦ and we never said itās the only way to learn. And no offense, but your profile photo is a good example of someone who lacks knowledge of anatomy.
Apparently, our way of learning has triggered you for some odd reason. I donāt have time for an endless debate. I just wanted to offer my advice to OP. This is all I will say on this topic.
lolā¦ok. If you say so. And my profile picture has given you so much insight into what I do. Again, okā¦lol.
This is the first night Iāve had a drink in months, so Iāll just leave it at that with no further elucidation of my current thoughtsā¦lol.
Just remembered, I wanted to be sure that I copied your reply to make sure it was still there in the morning. I always need a good laugh.
Studying and practicing is literally what we both saidā¦ and we never said itās the only way to learn. And no offense, but your profile photo is a good example of someone who lacks knowledge of anatomy.
Apparently, our way of learning has triggered you for some odd reason. I donāt have time for an endless debate. I just wanted to offer my advice to OP. This is all I will say on this topic.