Sculpting His Head

This was going to be tricky. The only way I could think of getting as much detail in that I wanted was to sculpt his head out of clay (remembering that the head is the most important part and will portray the emotion of the scene). Little did I know how much time it would take!! It took, all in all, a week and a day until I got around to making a cast from it... I am extremely pleased with they way it turned out though. Here are a few images (of the hundreds there are - believe me!) of the creation of my sculpt:

I started by creating a basic shape out of polystyrene. I drew around the paper template I made for the previous polystyrene head and took it back an inch or so. By the time I had finished shaping it, I had probably taken off another good few centre meters. I decided to use polystyrene instead of creating a wire armature inside because it would be lighter (less clay), less expensive (less clay), and quicker to sculpt (less clay).

However, before I started to sculpt over the top of it, I needed something to represent eyes. I found a polystyrene ball (good ol' polystyrene) which was a perfect size. The only problem was, there was only one and it was soft. So, I made a two part plaster mould and mixed Polyester Gelcoat with Artex to create something quite similar to car body filler. I created two casts from these, one half eye and one full one (this way I could see which one works best) and then I started to sculpt:

I took the original polystyrene head I had created and made it slightly smaller and more in proportion to the rest of his body. This way, when I was creating the clay sculpt, I could keep referring back to the polystyrene version to make sure it was the right size.

I kept adding more and more clay on to try and get his basic face shape looking realistic. I had covered up one eye somewhere along the line so I re-opened that and tried adding a little bit of detail on:

It was all going wrong and I needed a fresh start so I took away some of the clay and started again. This time, I thought I would try and get the finished side of his face done first so that I knew where the muscles would sit on the un-finished side of the face (now I know that I should have done it all at once which would have been quicker and easier but we learn from our mistakes, right?) Anyway, I got to a stage where I was happy with his finished side:

I kept referring back to my polystyrene head to make sure it was the correct size and just out of curiosity, I compared it with my head at this stage:

Not too bad!

So now I started on the un-finished side (this was the longest part and the hardest to get right) I made sure I had muscle reference next to me so that it would be mostly correct (of course, I am never going to be able to get it absolutely bang-on accurate because I have no idea what the inside of a face looks like! Luckily for me, neither do the majority of people so in the end, I decided it just had to look 'right'... but still mostly accurate):

I tried getting the basic shape and the basic outlines but it just wasn't sitting right! Everything was wrong and more importantly it looked wrong. So I decided I would tweak the parts on the finished side so that I was completely happy with it and continue working on the un-finished half the next day (oh, now I know better - work on both sides at once!!) I added an ear which I was very happy with and smoothed his face down and added skin texture (which I created by taking a latex cast of an orange):

At this point, I was pretty pleased with it (if I ignored the un-finished side) and started to work on the other side. I knew however, that this side was all wrong and there was no saving it. It would be better for me to start again... so that's what I did...

Now then, I needed some teeth (or perhaps that was just an excuse to leave it alone for an hour or two) but in my head, if I had the teeth, I could position the jaw correctly and work from there. So, I made some teeth from Sculpey (these were just for the sake of the sculpt and I was planning on creating more realistic teeth later on):

It still wasn't sitting right with me so I took it all off and started again:

I was starting to like the shape, especially the detail around the top of his head. Once I had put this in, the rest started to fall in place. One thing that was making it all so difficult was that I had become attached to the finished side of his face and didn't want to add or take any more clay on / away from it. Unfortunately though, the other side of his face just wasn't corresponding with this finished side. A lot of it was protruding far too much and it didn't look like the same face. So, I had to add more clay on to the finished side which would allow me to balance out the other side...

I was having so much trouble with his face around the nose and jaw area that I decided to just get rid of it and take it back down to the skull.

And that was it! I had finally finished it! Some parts were starting to crack but this wasn't a problem, I would be able to fix it just before I started to cast it and hopefully it wouldn't show up. So, here's the finished sculpt:

I'm pretty pleased with it myself!