I needed to move and resize the ears on my model. I’ve gotten myself into a mess and don’t have any more ideas to try to fix this. Can I trim and delete what’s left of the ears? I used Move, Smooth, Clay and mask tools. I found that “erasing” with Clay and Smooth left only certain parts of the ear. Holes would appear. It’s very amusing to me what I ended up with, but I’d really love to understand what I did and how to fix this.
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There is a few ways but id recommend you try optimize your topology later (quadremesher or wte):
A: if you use hide on the ear section (make sure frontfacing vertex is turned on) „delete" it make sure you got a fill option or use fill hole afterwards which is in the topologymenu.
B: if you use „mask" use „split" in the maskmenu topright (itll show up in the object list as separate item you can edit or delete that then).
D: mask it out invert mask (so only the earpart gets affected) use a lowres dyntoposmooth over it.
E: Use trim if you can manage to not cut off more than you want (mask doesnt cooperate with trim though)
It really depends on what you prefer like if you want to keep a part etc remember you can always segment or split sections off a model then fuse it back (for instance with boolean) personally i facegroup out sections that are a bit tricky for easier editing. That said after altering your object you should check if the facegroups arent a mess.
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Thank you.
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You’re welcome i hope i didnt write it too confusing 
if one of these need a more precise explanation/visual help feel free to ask 
I’ve been re-reading your most wonderful answer and have printed to post at my desk.
Thanks. I will reach out if I need more help.
Hi; Different problem. Can you help me with this?
When I click mirror in world to mirror the ear on my model the ear appears to the far left of the head. Just now when I tried mirroring in local, I got a blue marker on the ear like the model is cattle but no ear. I checked for masks, found none. I had the same problem with the eyes earlier. I ended up dealing with them manually. When I click Gizmo it goes to the center of the head and same when ear is selected. Is this a “symmetry off” state?
Im not super-knowledgeable for what causes certain mirror situations but i would suggest you:
Select the setting i circled (and maybe the local method thing too) make sure your head is selected (the mirror will use the head/orientation as center i think pivot might be fine too)
And create a mirror this will put your head into the mirrorfolder but you can move the head out of it and move in whatever else you want to mirror as long as you dont move the mirrorfolder itself with the gizmo the ears should be on both sides of the head
Also on a sidenote the object pivot and the symmetry pivot are two separate pivots
Thanks for your response. I don’t recognize the menu. I’m on a desktop. Or maybe I don’t know where to look. I have been going thru all the settings to no avail. I have tried mirror on Local several times with no joy.
Oh sorry its under here in your object listing when you click on “add” you will see s gearicon on the upper right! (You might need select gizmo/on gizmo active too for it to work) And “method: local” is at the bottom inside that menu too (its in my first screenshot in the prev comment)
Thanks!
The tips for mirroring worked! When I clicked on Mirror again it brought the ear closer to the body but not quite on the head like it’s taunting me. I realized something else was amiss. I noticed that the menu with Validate also had Mirror on it. I deleted the offending ears, selected Mirror and added new the ears. No blue tag this time. I still didn’t have symmetry, so I tried Gizmo edit and finally got Symmetry back. For now.
Thanks so much for your help again. Had to look - love your art. My site is cynthiawellsart.com.
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im glad it worked out! I think if you use any merging and remeshing type operation it shifts the pivot to a new location sometimes maybe thats what happened 
thankfully both pivots can me moved easily & thank you your pieces look great too 
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what is Dyntopsmooth?
Just the dyntopo mode and the smoothtool.
Dyntopo/dynamic topology is a sculpting mode that lets you increase or reduce the vertexcount (how it acts depends wether you use a fixed resolution, brushsize or zoom). If you use it together with the smooth brush (it works with any other brush too) you can reduce the topology where you use it pretty fast (you could also use the option to remesh with a lower resolution at the bottom of the same tab in the screenshot if you need to reduce geometry) it respects the mask so its quite nice to use for specific sections, I hope that helps.
