Human Warrior Bust

This is the first time I got to sculpt a human. (Actually, I did get to do the king riding a dragon, but I don't really count it, because it was made without attention to detail and without really trying to get the proportions right.) One of the reasons I usually sculpt creatures is that it's easier. It is a lot of fun, and I do love the fantasy part, but a part of the reason is simply that it's easier.

We know exactly how a human head is shaped and what correct anatomy looks like. We will notice a misplaced or out-of-shape feature in a minute, specifically on the face, which always gets our attention first. Monsters, on the other hand, have much more fluid anatomy. It still needs to make sense, but we don't need to explain it, and illogical anatomy is much less distinguishable.

An example that pops to mind is wings. We are all familiar with angels, or, removing the mystical name, let's call them winged humans. For a human to have wings to actually fly with, the wingspan would need to be about 10 meters, and let's not forget the huge muscles needed to handle the torque those wings put on the body. In common fantasy art that is rarely the case, but we are much less likely to notice that breaking of physics and anatomy. Monsters and creatures are even easier. Bone structure is very fluid, and even muscle tone can be slightly off (though I would claim that's less true, and we'd notice muscle mistakes a bit more). Getting back to the subject, it is very difficult to create a human because of that need for correctness.

As a side note, speaking of fantasy and humans: I have never gotten close to sculpting a female head or a feminine monster. Most of them rely on the human feminine head structure, which I have not succeeded in the times I have tried. At its base, a female or feminine monster is basically a human female head, usually with a fantasy feature like teeth, ears, eyes or skin color.

So here, I got something that looked like a human male face. Even though the chin and face are a bit too long, I think it's decent.

Since I was on the road at the time, I decided to only make a bust, but to make detailed clothing. I invested lots of effort in getting all the details of the armor I had envisioned. I didn't have a clear reference, but I had a vision of a majestic Roman armor. I was also checking references for some exaggerated style of armor, something that would be from World of Warcraft, with shoulder guards made from the skulls of big slain creatures. I did make them, but it just felt cartoony and I couldn't get the feel I wanted. I had the same consideration for the helmet: big horns or a "Lich King" style helmet. After spending way too much time not making a decision, I went with the simple one. I liked it, and I discarded the other ideas. It's a regular human, maybe some Roman general.

I wanted a tight fit helmet, or at least one that isn't bulky. It's hard to make that in a single piece without making the clay bulky, so it was either a multi-piece helmet or constructing it on the head. I had already made the full head, and a helmet that comes off would have been too big, because the back of the head isn't a circle, it's an ellipse. So I constructed it on the head, which meant it couldn't be a separate piece.

The lesson is not to create the full head if the helmet is going to cover it. For example, create just the face and leave the back of the skull absent. Then the helmet and the face are two separate pieces that fit together easily, and each one can be painted on its own.

For the painting I tried to get references, but went for simplicity: metallic and bronze for the armor and the helmet. Then I had Gemini generate a couple of coloring references, and it accidentally suggested a cool idea: leaving the human, meaning the face and skin, uncolored, so the whole thing is sort of a sculpture. It worked well, and it made redundant the problem of getting to the face through the cracks of the helmet to paint it.