iSculpt.org

Sculpting the human figure is a daunting task when approached for the first time, and no part is harder to sculpt than the face. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, and foremost, the human face is something we see every day. While modern social mores (in America) require us to cover the better part of our bodies in clothing most of the time, we are always exposed to faces. We see them all the time, and are very familiar with them. If something is wrong with a drawing or sculpture of a face, we know it instantly. Someone who has never touched clay or wax or picked up a pencil to draw can look at a bust and tell you when something is off. They may not be able to identify exactly what is wrong, but they will know that something is.

Secondly, the face is very complex. The human face is the only part of the body where muscles exist for no other reason than to communicate. Through the rest of the body, muscles connect bone to bone (by way of tendons) in order to allow movement. The bicep muscle, for example attaches to the humerus and the radius (it also attaches to the scapula), and, along with several other muscles, helps the forearm flex and pronate. This is the formula followed through most of the body: muscles connects to at least two different bones and by their contraction, contribute to the movement around a particular joint.

That's not the case with the face. Oh, there are muscles in the face that work this way - those that move your jaw - but the majority of the muscles of the face are small muscles that connect skull to skin, and exist only to convey emotion or to help you form the sounds that make up speech. All these little muscles contribute to very subtle changes that convey a wide range of emotions that other humans seem to understand instinctively.

But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Before a new sculptor attempts to tackle the nuance of emotion, it is important to get the basic structure of the head correct, and there are a few things almost every beginning sculptor gets wrong. Let's take a look at the skull:

If you're a new sculptor, you should become very friendly with the skull. Draw it. Sculpt it. Buy a plastic or plaster skull for reference. You need to understand this shape well if you're going to sculpt heads correctly. Nothing I say can substitute for diving in and sculpting or drawing because your right brain learns only by doing and only through repetition. Words and letters are symbols, and by definition, the domain of the left brain.

There are, however, things that can be pointed out using words that can shorten your learning curve a bit. For today, I'm going to point out one of those things and one only. If you are new to sculpting, I want you to focus on this particular thing every time you work on a face, because almost every new sculptor get this wrong.

See the teeth? Okay, now here's the one fact you need to keep in mind to get the mouth right: the curve of the lips follows the curve of the teeth, not the curve of the skull. Let's look at a skull from the bottom:

Notice that the teeth form a much tighter curve than the curve of the skull? It sort of looks like a tennis ball inside a lopsided bowling ball or giant egg. Please notice that there is a pronounced difference in the circumference of these two circles. Your lips follow the smaller circle, not the larger one.

From the middle of your face, your lips go back much more steeply than most new sculptors want to believe. If you hold a straight edge, like a pencil, or a ruler, gently against your lips without pressing, you will see that the corners of your mouth are quite a bit further back than the straight edge. This is even more pronounced in a smile because the zygomatic and risorius muscles pull the corners of the mouth even further back along the curve of the teeth.

As with many parts of sculpting, the secret to getting the lips right is to understand the underlying bone structure, so make sure you keep looking at a skull in addition to your other source material. Unfortunately, reference photographs do not often show the draft of the lips very well, so working from a model is extraordinarily helpful when you're first learning. The great thing about sculpting faces, is that models are much easier to come by since you don't have to ask someone to take off their clothes and assume an uncomfortable position for a length of time.