a few days ago during my lunch break at work i set out to sculpt a quick head or two with reference for the first time, trying to get the planes of the human head correct as my baseline. just the basic shape of it, no refinement.
i can only assume i kept checking the reference way too often, so instead of making sure my base *felt* right and then using the reference to tweak, i was trying to get every single brushstroke to be 100% correct immediately. which, obviously, did not work out at all.
i can't even show you what i created, i didn't even save any images. not because it looked bad but because it felt bad.
i did, however, a day later, take out the pressure by fully removing the reference again. i sculpted two decent heads that, while both would have benefitted from being held against a reference at least for the detailing, were fine without reference anyways. i seem to kind of have a good intuition about what goes where, but i need to give myself the freedom to explore the shape without trying to follow a specific form.
i'll definitely need to work out a way to incorporate reference, though. i do want to do fanart sculpts, and for that i need at least some likeness to the character or person i'm trying to create, and that does not go without reference.
while i'm still this early in the process, though, i do think it's fine. i think i can keep exploring things with no pressure for now, or maybe slowly start easing a ref in for the detailing, because that's what lacks the most currently. my shapes are okay, i think.
a day after the failed sculpts i opened nomad again and the last try was still open, because that's what nomad does when you don't explicitly close the file, so i thought: why not try and salvage it. why not try and just add some digital clay to this digital not-quite-shape and see where it goes. and it went quite well, i think, because i set sail with zero plan and ended up here:
i've had these renders laying around for a day and a half now, which is unusual for me, because generally i just sculpt and render and post all in one big move and then continue on with my day. but this render differs from the two my middle-aged white men i've done so far in every way and i wanted to make sure i didn't stereotype without meaning to.
i've never sculpted a woman before, i've never sculpted a Black person before, and i've never sculpted someone who wasn't quite angular in the face before.
which are statements that are easy to make when all you've sculpted so far are the heads of two middle-aged white men, but nevertheless true.
so, i hope i did her justice.
getting some color onto my sculpts is a massive process when using blender, because in order for my lineart setup to work, i need to retopologize the sculpt. the lineart is generated by distance and position of vertices against each other, and that gets all kinds of fucked up when you have half a million of them and works very well when you have like 20k, so i'd have to retopo in any case. but i did want to see this head with some materials on it the same day, so i tried my best with the nomad sculpt paint tools.
you can go all out with vertex painting in nomad, and i've seen people do truly incredible stuff with it, but this was not only my first time using it but also i didn't take my time with it at all, because it was just supposed to show me a general direction and not be a final version.
i'm showing you anyways, because it's part of the process and thus part of this art log thing i'm doing.
again, i hope i did her justice.
i really want to get her into blender and give her a proper skin texture paint and a proper afro, because the current one is lacking and i'm aware and also sorry, and also she deserves some better eyes. hope i can get at least some work in on the weekend. let's see if i can make her move :)
