Realistic Skull and then the Head over the top

 

Planes of the Skull

 After a brief family vacation to the Florida Keys, which was very inspiring, I am back to studying sculpting the head. 
The next video was about sculpting the Planes of the Skull, so you can pay attention to where all the planes meet and where the high ridges flow along the skull. These influence the layers of skin and the attachment points for the muscles, so they are important to understand. Because the focus is on the planes, we are not detailing things like teeth and other details, so that will be in the following tutorial.

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 lofty 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 committing 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 another count.

Well, I need to tell the story, even if it's 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

St. Joseph Parish, San Mateo

I saw the morning light of early fall casting shadows on St. Joseph's Parish on the way back from dropping my son at school. I realized, wait a minute, I am freelance... I can just grab my watercolor pencils and sketchbook and run across El Camino and paint this right now!

   I took the sky in between the steeple and chapel too dark , if it was the value of the was on the left of the steeple, basically "just" there, it would have read much better. Live and learn. Used Ultramarine blue, Light Ocre, and burnt sienna.

Stryker Ride

Here is a dad whose daughter was hit by a car, driven by some militants that we were chasing down an alleyway. She seemed ok, but was shaken up and we offered to drive them over to the hospital.

We caught the guys who hit her and arrested one of them, they were loaded down with weapons in their trunk. We thought he might want revenge, but he said that it was not the way of his religion, Islam. It was the first time I had heard an Iraqi talking about the tenants of his faith relating to forgiveness and abhorring vengeance.

Finals on the UT challenge

UT Concept Art Challenge on Polycount

Jewel Theif

A couple of sketches from last months trip to Europe

A church just inside the western wall of Dubrovnic's old town. (AKA King's Landing)

A canal in Venice. You have seen a scene like this a thousand times no doubt, but being there in person for me, still shocked me with its mystery and beauty. Often things seem like they have been overhyped when you finally get there, but Venice, I could have spent much more than the 48 hours we had to see as much as possible.

Monster attacking fortress

Color Thumbs

Watched Feng Zhu's FZD design cinema episode 73 today and got inspired to do some color roughs.

Train Station

Its a train designed for interplanetary travel, using electromagnetic acceleration to escape the planets gravitational field.

bar at the Aladdin

I got in to Iain McCaigs workshop today and that made my trip worth it for me. Watching a master concept artist at work, and witnessing the enthusiasm which animates him and those around him is an example of what is best in the human spirit. And it was just plain entertaining. Sat here in the second floor bar at the Aladdin hotel which is a historic building from 1925. There is a feeling of class in here, even though it must have been really something when it was brand new  during the roaring 20's. Michael the bartender was the only guy there when I started the sketch, after about 20 min, in walked a lady in a red dress as if my pondering the hotels former glory had somehow summoned this mysterious dame from a noir film. Turned out she was actually another artist named Prissila who was just dressed up for the award show. So perhaps there is no truth in the Aladdin being haunted, but it does turn up as such in a google search to be just that.....

spectrum fantastic art live

This place is really more than I could have expected. Kansas city Missouri is a world class art Mecca and I have thouroughly enjoyed my first day on the ground. I had a layover at LAX on Thursday and did this sketch and then made these characters on the flight to MCI.
     I met another artist from St. Louis who gave me a tour of some of the main attractions, including the jaw dropping Nelson Atkins Museum which had architecture rivaling Europe or anything we have in the bay area, but the treat was going inside and seeing paintings from all my favorite eras, and places on earth. NC Wyeth, Jean Leone Gerome (who had his own room) Monet, Sargent, and on and on.
     The town is phenomenal and this is before I have tried the BBQ which is my next goal.

Ended the evening doing figure drawing and ended up sitting next to Justin Sweet who was kind enough to sign a print earlier and gave a nice panel interview. That leads me too meeting Swayne , one of the three co-hosts of my favorite art podcast , sidebarnation.com . it was a goal to let him know how meaningful that source of discussions on art is to me.