Sketching A Head in Digital Clay

I am always on the look out for ways to merge new media with older processes and lately, I have been sketching alot more than I have for awhile. While sketching I have been using information from Andrew Loomis, Kevin Chen and Glen Vilppu to help me quickly describe form.

Sketching, in some forms, is a highly evolved visual language. Some sketches are used to define volume. Some sketches are used to define effects of light. Some sketches are used to show structure and form like these Bridgeman drawings.

However you look at it, a sketch communicates information. The information it communicates depends on the intentions or needs of the person doing the sketching.

Pencil Sketch

Here is a recent quick sketch I did from a YouTube video of actors on the red carpet. My goal was to quickly establish the structure. To do this I used construction techniques from the artists mentioned above and used the lighting to help communicate form.

I have colored the first structural elements in red, the secondary structural elements in blue and the tertiary structural elements in yellow. The color coding can give you a sense of the timeline for each element.

When sketching, it could be said that we work along the z-axis of the sheet of paper. We draw lines on the paper to delineate form.

When we sculpt in 3D we are often moving all around the model as much as we can. This is an important habit to get into. Unlike a sketch, we do not work solely along the Z axis of the model. We work in all three axis of the 3D model.

However, we can use some of the techniques of sketching to help us block in and establish the shape of our model. It is this way of approaching a quick head sculpt that I want to talk about in this post.

Steps For Sketching Your Sculpt

1. We start with a PolySphere.ZTL and use the Move brush to shape it. We pull the jaw out and flatten the sides. Remember to turn on symmetry (use the Transform palette) and to turn on Perspective (Persp in the Draw palette).

2. Sketch the features as though you were drawing the outlines of their form or making basic proportional notations. Just quick strokes to represent the top, side and bottom of the eye cavity.

3. From the front view adjust some of the features like the brow. The brow sits inside of and sort of rests on the cheek bones. To redraw it, I just make up and down strokes like a pencil that say, “Hey, the edge of the brow is here.”

I also softened the forms abit using Smooth. You can press SHIFT on the keyboard to toggle to the Smooth brush.

4. With the mouth, I make sure to start with a barrel shape. I use smooth alot to make sure the shape is good enough to sketch on. Then I draw the corners of the mouth and then the line between the lips. Drawing the line between the lips is very helpful because it acts to automatically push the lower lip behind the upper lip, the natural order of their shapes.

5. Then I sketch the features even more with a “dark pencil”. The dark pencil is basically the Standard brush with ZSub on. Keep your ZIntensity low to avoid “too dark” of a pencil.

Once these steps are completed the bulk of my work shifts to a more 3D focused nature. I begin to look at how the forms transition into each other and are “rounding” correctly. At this stage I use alot of the Smooth brush and the Clay brush.

Here is movie of the entire process:

Also, if you want to see some fantastic sketching check out The Sketch Theatre.

I hope this was useful to you and happy ZBrushing!