Head Sculpting Practice

Well it has been nearly a decade since I used this blog. I am kicking it off, sort of getting sick of the Social Media, and I am just looking for a quiet place to post slow progress on developing some new skills, or dusting off old ones. I havn't done much 2d art, or 3d organic modeling as a part of my professional life in the last 10 years, so I am working on head sculptures.
Its been at least a year or more since I switched from Maya over to Blender, and I thought it would be a great time to see if I can get use out of the program as a Zbrush replacement. Finding the youtube channel and Art Station of Nikolay Naydenov, has assured me that it can. He has excellent live streams, videos and downloadable tutorials for very fair prices. I am working my way through his head sculpting tutorial and am posting my first 2 heads here.
The first is a "before" model, with no reference. Just seeing what you can do with your current knowledge.

The second is one I did while following along with him, still no real reference but trying to mimic what he is doing.

They are both a bit sad and rough :) However, I can see a bit of improvement following along on how he develops the ear. That mouth and the eyes are really strange. Oh well, the next is developing the planes of the skull, which should be fun and hopefully help with practicing accuracy with those bony landmarks to help with the anatomy of the head.

Pacifica - Mori Point

Nice day to dust off the cintiq companion hybrid and get back into some digital plein-aire sketching. The Air was crisp and the wind varied from light to moderate, but the umbrella I brought was a life saver in stopping the glare on the screen. In the distance is San Pedro point and the Devil's Slide area.

Iraq War Journal

I have been working on a story in my head for over a decade now. My deployment to Iraq in 2004-2005 with the 1/24 INF regiment has been looping in my mind for these years each day.

Sometimes I try to make sense of it, sometimes I try to avoid it, sometimes I try to just feel grief, anger and then just let it go.

But there it is the next day.



I kept a journal with sketches every few pages so I would remember more clearly. it is not perfect, not kept daily, but there is alot in there. I am working on transcribing it into digital form so I can try and get help from friends that understand narrative and figure out what I want to say with this.

I want to make comic book of this, pictures and words recounting the story fairly close to how I remember it. I had loft goals for why, so that I could somehow sum up the experience in a way that would make the next generation of people hesitate before commiting troops in any conflict.

However, I must be realistic that this may be out of my control. Who knows if the reader will find it interesting, useful. Maybe there has been enough of this, and the world is just too war weary to listen to antother count.

Well, I suppose i need to tell the story, even if its just to externalize it for my own mental benefit. Maybe another Vet could be helped by this. Or maybe not.

While transcribing I thought I would post a page of one of my sketches from that year of a horrible scene. Just to keep me accountable not to forget to work on this project.

Works in Progress, or not to be?

I have been using some downtime to try and get a portfolio piece out there. You know, having that as a goal makes it really challenging to be creative at times. Pieces flow much better when they come from a place of true inspiration. As such, these are not ready for primetime and may never be, still I wanted to get something posted on here as its been a while since a real update.

art is hard

man, what a sketch. so much effort for such a weird thing. I am out of practice.

Dr sketchy's Adele Wolf

Rock Ramps - Environment Sketch