World-renowned sculptor Johanna Schwaiger.
Johanna brings over 20 years of expertise in portrait and figure sculpting, having taught
at schools and shown her work in galleries across the globe.
In this series, she’ll teach you her method for sculpting a female portrait in clay.
So, as soon as the features are built, I get a little bit of sense of how the feel of the
sculpture is going to look like.
That’s a good time to think about the composition, how far I want the turban to build, and how
far down I want the sternum to be.
So, I’m looking forward to the session today.
Let’s get started.

Okay, so we haven’t been working for a few days.
We took a break from the sculpture.
And to continue, we have fresh energy and look over on what stage we are.
I introduced so far all the features, the proportions are more or less working.
Everything seems to be in its right position.
The next step will be to get more into detailing and more into the surface work.
Also, we didn’t introduce the neck really at all.
It’s nicer if the portrait doesn’t just stop underneath, like before clavicle, but
to introduce the clavicle a little bit, the shoulder area is for composition purposes
is nice especially that we have kind of like a weight on the top.
She is wearing a turban.
We also want to make sure that we have some weight down here so it balances the composition
better.
It is important how you crop your sculpture.
If you ever do part of a sculpture, just the torso or a portrait for that matter.
This is an artistic decision, how you want your composition to be.
In this case, I want to introduce the clavicle going down until the lower part of the neck.
This is what we’re going to be doing today.
As soon as we introduce the neck and build that, I’m going to show you how to make
a neck efficient and easy and not make it complicated for ourselves.
After that we will keep working on the features.
We have to make sure that the eyes are really working so there is lots more work to do.
I don’t necessarily mean getting more details in the eyes, but just strengthening the pronunciation
of the eye orbit, of the eyelid, of the bone up here.
These are all things that I would like to achieve today, but we’ll start with the
neck, and then we’ll go over the face and hopefully also finish the turban on the back.
Okay, let’s get started.
In order to get the neck working, let me just tell you the most basic information about
the neck.
The volume, first of all, the neck is not straight.
The spine is a little bit in the tilt.
That’s why I chose my armature to be in a bit of a tilt too, to not have to be straight
up, but kind of in this position.
The first thing I’m trying to decide is where is the biggest neck muscle, which is
the sternocleidomastoideus.
It has this really long name.
It’s okay if you don’t remember.
The sternocleido—it’s behind the ear.
This is where it attaches.
Very kind of thick string, and then it divides into two points, like before the pit of the
neck, like here in the process of the clavicle and then along the clavicle, behind the clavicle.
It turns into two fingers.
What I’m doing is I’m looking from the side.
I’m making sure that it’s well lit so you can see.
Also, I’m turning my model and then draw in how the sternocleidomastoid behaves.
We kind of already did that, so I’m going to show you from the side what I mean by that.
For that you don’t really need a model because this kind of muscle behaves the same on everybody.
You just need to see like does my model have a mean neck, a short neck, that’s something
you need to decide.
Also, you need to look from the side view, how far forward the sternocleidomastoid attaches,
like how forward is the clavicle.
For that you look from the side of the model.
What I was just looking at is for you to see where this point is vertical to the model,
where it attaches down here.
So, I looked at the model, and I can see, okay, it’s like halfway basically from the
chin to the corner of the jaw point here.
I will add more material here to come a little bit forward, and then I’m going to add some
material here, and then we’ll attach it behind.
This is one thing that’s very important.
The two strings of the sternocleidomastoid build the pit of the neck also together with
the clavicle, how the clavicle like goes together.
From above, the clavicle has this kind of shape, like it’s a triangle shape going
backwards.
We should start to introduce the tube.
Here is part of the neck muscles that are under the sternocleidomastoideus and the trapezius
that’s actually behind.
Those are the three big muscle masses that we can see clearly on the neck.
Then, of course, don’t forget the hyoid bone, and it’s the hyoid cartilage that’s
underneath it, like from the side it creates this kind of curvature that you can see on
the model clearly.
It’s, of course, stronger with men and less strong with women.
Okay, so I’m starting to build the trapezius.
As soon as I made the sternocleido kind of working in its right angle and its right width,
you can also measure the width of your model, like how wide the neck is at its widest point.
Then I’m starting to build the trapezius from behind.
I’m going to model and just checking for one second how wide the neck is and walk to
my sculpture and see, okay, there is a little bit of room left, but not so much.
If anything, I don’t want the neck to be too wide.
This would look to masculine and it changes the whole feel of your portrait.
It’s important to make sure that the width of the neck is really working.
The next thing I want to be doing, l can see it on my sculpture.
From behind I am using my blocking tool, and I add some mass here for the trapezius.
We keep it simplified in the beginning as always.
We need some more material here.
I hope you can see that here.
Just very important—underneath the sternocleidomastoideus
it’s like a triangle kind of shape that’s dipping in.
You have to make muscle from behind.
I was drawing out this kind of shape to show you how it goes forward.
You look from the front, and you do the same thing immediately on the other side.
Starting with the trapezius.
So, if you ask yourself, what is the trapezius really, it’s important for you to build
the trapezius for the whole neck muscles.
It attaches at the atlas, the bone right behind the skull, and it goes down really far below
your rib section, so it’s like a back muscle that you see from the front.
It also attaches at the inside of the clavicle here on that side.
We simplify the trapezius, bring it forward.
Then, as I said, the cropping is important.
From underneath, make sure that this line kind of is straight—not straight, but you
clean it up just a bit.
Then you look from the front, and then you already have a better sense of a neck.
It’s more convincing than if it’s just like going lowdown and here is nothing.
It kind of looks weird.
It’s important to create a sense of trapezius from the back.
Now I would like to introduce the clavicle.
As soon as I have the trapezius, have the sternocleido, kind of get an idea where the
pit of the neck is supposed to be.
You can even measure how far it goes down.
Then we want to build the clavicle that goes backwards.
Remember, it’s from the front.
It’s really this kind of triangle shape that shoots backwards.
And so I’m building up from the front, the clavicle.
I can also step back and look at your model.
Then make sure that the symmetry is working on both sides.
Just showed it from the side.
I’m working in the material.
Those are the three masses.
I exaggerated the sternocleidomastoid just a little bit.
It’s always good to make clear where the shape should be, and then you can soften it after.
Then from this side.
Basically, it’s really the sternocleidomastoid, hyoid bone with the hyoid cartilage underneath it.
Then the back neck muscle here that comes out here, and then the
trapezius from the back.
We keep it simple for now and we can keep working on it later.
We want to make sure that we have some mass that we like.
Okay, so now would be a good time.
Like, we’re checking the profile line, also how it behaves with the neck that we just
built a block-in of.
We didn’t work on the details at all.
We just made sure that there are the masses introduced.
I’m going to turn my model to the side, look at my sculpture from the side.
Okay, this side for now.
Alright.
From this side… let’s bring the earlobe forward.
I’m now going to introduce the side information.
Okay, so the ear needs to come forward a little bit.
I just saw that the earlobe needs to come forward a little bit.
The good thing about clay is that you can really make changes toward the end, but that
doesn’t mean that you just work unconsciously.
You always have to concentrate, obviously.
But it’s okay to change things around until the very end.
I just saw things that I need to change on the neck area because I just introduced this
information.
Really, I’m just going over obvious things I’m seeing that still need to get fixing.
While I’m searching for shapes I’m seeing on her, I try to abstract the surface a little bit.
Don’t think, like I do think of the anatomy, but also I’m thinking sometimes just of
like the abstract shape that helps me to define, like how is really the surface landscape behaving.
At the
same time I’m filing in holes.
I’m starting to fill in the surface.
I don’t like the word smooth because I don’t want my portrait to be smooth really.
I don’t mind if you see a little bit of modeling signs that you see.
A person made it.
I like that it keeps it fresh.
It doesn’t make it look static or plastic.
I think it’s fascinating and you look at the person’s work and you kind of still
can see, like on a drawing you see the lines.
On a stone sculpture it’s not polished completely, but you see sometimes a little bit how the
person is working.
I love for instance, the infinito kind of style, for instance, how he keeps certain
areas just unfinished so it represents a little bit, the merging, the hand, the signature
of the artists, and it makes it just look alive.
I try to keep it, I try to bring it to the finishe level where all the forms are as a
result, as possible, as good as they can.
Like, you see the surface.
Nothing is on its wrong place.
Things are, things have a nice surface sense, but I’m not looking forward to copying nature
and producing a perfectly smooth surface.
That’s not what my personal taste is.
But, this is something, this is personal preference.
If you like that kind of sense, like to make it really finished and smooth, that’s totally
fine, but I very often have seen forms that are not perfectly resolved and then smoothed
out to maybe cover sometimes weaknesses n the sculpture, to make it look like finished
and polish it before.
It really has depth and really has a sense of structure and sense of volume of it.
Very often—and I did that.
I would jump to a finish too soon and just smooth it all out.
Then it’s a weak sculpture really.
It looks dead.
It doesn’t look alive.
We try—what I’m trying to go for is a live surface that represents as good as I
can all the shapes that I’m seeing.
That’s basically what I try to do in this stage.
I’m filling in things.
I don’t want it too rough.
I don’t want holes.
It shouldn’t look like she has a skin disease or something.
Working on the forms and on the surface at the same time.
At this stage, even though I don’t, I try not to make too big of changes.
Even though sometimes I would see them.
I don’t know.
For me, I feel like I could make changes forever.
It never seems perfect.
At some point you just have to make the decision, like I captured what I wanted to capture.
It has the sense of her.
It has the feel of my model.
It has the characteristic.
Not everything is exactly perfect like her, but I like the feel of it.
Sometimes you just say, alright, from now on I’m going to stop working on changing
major proportions, or I’m going to stop working on certain lines that I chose that
I liked before because you could change it forever.
It’s clay.
You can’t manipulate it.
I remember, a teacher of mine, Robert Bodem, said one time, “There is never a finished
sculpture.
It’s always just the moment when you decide to stop working on it.”
There is a moment you say I stop working on it, and then you call it finished.
But, it’s never finished.
You can work on it forever if you want to.
But, we don’t forever, and it’s not fun to watch me forever, so let’s push it forward.
23:18 What I’m doing until the end, as I said, I don’t make major changes at this
stage anymore, but what I still do until the end is drawing on my sculpture.
I want to, for instance, map out things.
I make little lines like this.
If you can see that.
For instance, where her cheekbone ends and it dives in, and those things you very often
have to keep marking it even though you already have like a nice and neat surface, it also
helps me to not be too satisfied with the surface too soon.
As soon as feel like, okay, this volume here or the apex of something could be a little
stronger or more exciting or more prominent.
I mark where it ends, and it immediately opens the surface up to manipulate it again.
Versus like, okay, I kind of already have a surface that I like.
We tend to not want to manipulate it too much anymore.
As soon as I make a drawing on it, a line with a tool, I open up the surface again.
If I feel like I can manipulate it and go into the form again and keep building up,
for instance.
What I can see from the side here, that area needs to be more clear.
Here is the turban above.
And then her cheekbone here.
I can see I’m exaggerating this plane a little bit.
Like, I want to reintroduce the structure of my cheekbones.
What I didn’t make nicer yet is the line underneath her jaw, like how it goes
to the hyoid bone.
Then, underneath it was the hyoid cartilage, we call it.
Then again, don’t make it too prominent so it looks masculine.
I’m filling in the shapes here.
Okay, let’s see what we can do with this turban a little bit better.
Therefore, I need more material like a big chunk of clay here.
I’m reacting to big masses.
I’m not imitating the finer shapes yet.
I want to just make it tight and nice around the skull so you can see where the skull turns
backwards.
Then the mass we wrap around her head back there.
Okay, and then we make bigger lines, just reacting to how the turban folds, but also
you want to react a little bit to the rest of your composition.
Composition is a very sensitive subject.
It’s hard because it’s artistic choice.
You have to understand masses and proportions.
Very often it’s a gut feeling, how you choose the position to be.
One rule that I learned that I like to use is when I do something on the head, I try
to now repeat angles that are happening anywhere else.
If you repeat angles too much, our psychology is built to, like, we want to repeat.
We think of parallel angles.
If you can, look from this side for a second.
Strong composition element is a jaw line because this is a very strong angle, right?
A very strong angle is the neck.
You can react to angles.
This is the language that you’re using.
It’s points upwards.
For instance, this is going upwards, and then I communicate and continue that in this direction,
but I don’t want to make a line that repeats the jaw line for instance or repeats exactly
this angle.
I don’t want that to happen here because that would make it look boring or just, you
know, it doesn’t help the composition very much.
I’m breaking this angle and this angle.
I kind of like repeat it here.
But, upside down, just to make it more interesting.
Even though you would say just the portrait, you also have to think of composition even
when you make a portrait.
If you don’t have a turban to make, you have hair, for instance, and you also want
to design the hair in a way that’s helping the composition.
It looks nice.
You don’t have to change the model’s hairstyle.
You change your sculpture.
The angle is above here to break them up a little bit, like this goes this way, and this
goes this way.
I’m still kind of adding volume to my turban that I’m making.
Later we will think a little bit more about the folds from the big information that I’m
choosing to maybe more details, maybe a little bit more lines or overlaps or folds, showing
how this is behaving.
Okay, so I’m going back—leave the turban for now.
Work a little bit more on this area to unify the surface just a bit.
Bring the ear out just a bit more.
Clean it up.
And then looking a little bit—I noticed before that the bone of her eye up here, that
could be much more prominent and stronger, so I’m going to look at how it looks on
here and just bring it out a little bit more.
If somebody has this strongly, like the bone from the eyebrow process, take advantage of it.
These are shapes that make it exciting too.
We’re bringing this out more.
I just want to change—not change but keep working
a little bit better on the surface here.
Also, see the shape is facing upwards.
Okay, good.
Let’s go over the surface just a little bit.
Clean it.
Let’s not be so messy here.
Good.
I like this view for now, and I will start to turn her soon, if
I can.
There you go.
That’s good for now, so we’re going to look from the front, and then I think we’re
going to take a little break.

So I just turned my model to the front.
I was working on the side for some time, and I want to check the front and especially the
features.
I want to make sure that the eyes on both sides are the same height and width.
That’s something I keep checking.
It’s difficult to line the eyes up perfectly.
Also, to make them and give them a nice sense of character and be subtle with the eyes.
It needs concentration.
I go first, we’ll be working with the eyes and orbit, eye socket, and then we’ll be
going to the lip more and draw that out better.
Go into the details of the lip.
Yeah, and then we’ll turn it to the other side and adjust there.
While I’m going and making adjustments to the features, at the same time I kind of work
on the surface too.
When I see something that needs to be adjusted, I’m not like as big with my gestures anymore,
I’m starting to be more and more precise and fill in holes and try to see little transitions.
It just becomes more and more detailed now.
I’m checking now the distance of the eyes.
Without even looking at the model, if you can see it from the front, without even looking
at the model, I can see that this eye is closer to the middle than this eye.
This symmetry is like not perfect yet.
It’s a little bit all over the place.
It’s kind of still like in a block-in stage.
We want to change that.
We can see how we can improve it.
First of all, the inner eye corners are very important.
I’m drawing that out better on both sides.
We’re reducing here.
Like, where the inner eye corner where the eyelid starts, we don’t have a lot of material here.
I just try to make this be kind of thin.
Then there is an apex, like the highest point before the eye turns, and it’s here.
And we mark it clearly.
Then we turn it down.
Then I work in the material.
Then there is always a line.
Okay, one more time I’ll show you from the front.
There is like a line that goes upwards.
Then it’s the apex, like the highest point.
Then it goes downwards.
Then there is one more direction change.
It’s one, two, three.
Sometimes it’s not as obvious, but everyone has this kind of clear direction changes of
the eyelid.
This is the second one.
It kind of goes rounder, like down more.
Now it’s also a little bit about just looking careful.
How that behaves.
Let’s make the bone here really nice and prominent how she has it filling in the bone here.
Then again, drawing out the eyebrow.
I’m already much more happy with this.
It’s not good if this is like a, like a not nice sharp curvature, like if this is
going a little bit in all directions we don’t like it.
The way to fix it is you can look from underneath and see how it turns.
When you look from underneath at the model where the inner eye corner is, it’s closer
to the eye, and then it starts to turn.
We need to get rid of material here.
Just make the curvature nice and round so you get a sense that the lid is really wrapping
around the eyelid.
It shouldn’t look like it’s stuck on the eyelid.
It’s covering the eyelid or the eyeball.
Then here is the point where it changes the direction.
Okay, I already like it better.
It’s a little more clear, but I will look from below.
Let’s soften this line a little.
The angle of the eyelid like I show you from the side, like this angle, let’s merge it
a little bit into the eyeball because that way it doesn’t look so sharp.
She doesn’t have like piercing eyes, you know?
You want it a little bit more simplified, if that makes sense.
Because I noticed something about, like looking at eyes.
When you look at somebody’s eyes you don’t read all the details at the same time.
You don’t see all the details, or you don’t focus on all the details.
You can’t have just like a big impression on the eyes, and that’s kind of how you
want to sculpt it too.
You don’t want to get too realistic or too sharp about the eyelids because
it looks too prominent.
Like, when you look at somebody’s eyes you blend out all the details.
You kind of see the big picture of it, the big impression of it, and this is what we
need to think of when we sculpt because we don’t have color.
We don’t have the color of the eye, the eye itself, the white eyeball, the color of
the eyelashes.
We don’t have that.
The only tool we have is depth.
We can only create a sense of color by choosing the depth.
Therefore, we want to work with turnings and depths and create a sense of depth of eyes.
Not too sharp.
I think I made my point.
I’m thinking here of the apex of this bone here that turns.
Also, we can start to introduce the eyebrows a little bit.
Eyebrows.
Same with hair.
We don’t sculpt little hair.
We cannot sculpt hair because it’s not a fine material where we can sculpt hair.
What we think of is, again, I don’t have color.
I only have, in this case, gray, so I need to create a sense of volume for the eyebrows.
I am creating a direction.
And so when you start, when you can see from that angle, when we start the eyebrow here,
you can make a mark where the hairs start to grow.
Here in that area they grow upwards very strongly.
The apex is here in this area.
The reason that we have eyebrows anyways is because like the sweat that comes down from
the forehead, it’s a protection for the eyes.
It creates a little shield here.
As it goes closer to the apex of the bone here, the eyes go from above down and from
below up.
We think of the mess and create a plane that goes upwards.
Until it hits the highest point of the eyebrow, then we want to create kind of a plane that
shows upwards.
Meet in the middle basically.
We exaggerate a little bit the height of the eyebrows, just so we get a sense of, like
that smudge here, just so we get a sense of volume.
Then the further backwards the eyebrows go, like really on the model you don’t see a
level change here so much like it merges into the bone.
We don’t want to make it on the same level because we want to show that the eyebrow continues
back to the outer side of the bone, so we draw a little bit of a line here.
You can make a little bit of eyebrow directions.
Now I’m working a little bit on the eye orbit just because I feel like I have to.
And then when I feel like certain planes are not straight enough, I have a tool that has
a little bit of teeth here.
I don’t know if you can see it.
On the other side, too, like a little bit.
I’m kind of cross-hatching over the form to get rid of little bumps and things that
I don’t like.
But I’m not brutal about it.
I’m not cutting away or anything.
Don’t forget this bone above the eyebrow.
This is a prominent bone that we want to emphasize.
I’m using again this metal tool to go over the forms a little bit.
Okay, so, as I said, eyes take a little bit of concentration and it’s important.
Now, I’m like working a little bit on the eye socket and in this area
to make a nice transition.
So, we’ve been working sometime now on this eye.
The other eye is a little bit behind.
That we want to change.
I’m still not happy with this turn.
So we need to look from below if the placement of the eye are on the same height.
I’m trying to map this out a little more and work on that side.
Now, with this tool I’m trying to make the transitions here
on the inside of the eye.
Eyebrows, not to forget.
Never forget the keystone, the…
A little bit of smoothing out the surface.
Okay, so the reason also why I exaggerate the width of the eyelid a little bit is because
I want to indicate lashes.
The only reason, like the only way I can do that is to create a little bit of shadow underneath
the eyelid.
That’s why I’m like the distance from the eyelid to the eyeball itself is thicker
in reality.
It gives a sense of eyelashes a little bit without making her too fancy.
Of course, individually that would not make any sense at all.
It’s not what we want to do.
Okay, now I’m going a little bit over the surface because we will approach the nose
and lip area because we haven’t been working on that.
So far I’m happy with the changes on the eyes.
I could soften this here a little bit more.
But then again, we’re never finishing one area completely and then going to the next
area and finishing it.
I always keep working a little bit.
Bring it to the same level as other things, and then I go to the nose, go to the mouth,
and then I will go back to the eyes again and work over those details.
Okay, let’s leave the eyes alone for a moment.
One thing that I want to do on the eye area is to just draw in a pupil.
It’s going to help us to design the eyelid better.
I’m not hollowing it out or anything.
I’m just going to draw it in a little bit.
Alright, let’s continue on the lip area.
In order to create a nice volume of lip like I really work on the surrounding of the lip
kind of first.
We haven’t worked out the philtrum at all.
This volume here, I’m building up first.
Remember what I said, underneath the lips we have this kind of wing-shaped form.
It really helps to sculpt David’s lips before doing a portrait just to get used to the basic
anatomy.
Let me know when you need a break.
I’m building the corners of the mouth first, and then I’m drawing again the lip
lines, the contours of the lip.
Now, what I want to show you here is there is the apex.
I’m just drawing it out.
This line that just drew is kind of like the apex just before it turns inward.
And then I like to create a little bit of line around the lips that gives it
a nice contour line.
It’s missing a little bit like here some volume
before it turns into the lips.

So, I am still kind of working on the features.
I’m a little bit all over the place, but it’s just that I keep seeing—when you
keep working on a feature and refining them, it’s just that your eyes move over all the
features.
And then when you change something on the lips, you see something on the eyes.
I know it’s a little bit hard to follow maybe because you cannot look into my brain.
I’m trying to make it clear.
It’s about refining.
I see, for instance, on the surface there are lumps and bumps that I try to fill, and
I always use just a tiny little bit of clay, as you can see, and work it into the surface
without changing the volume too much.
And then I have like a tool where I show you this before.
This has little teeth in it, like I made them with a nail file.
With that I can map out or I can refine surfaces because I am not cutting away.
Again, I am like just kind of going over the surface and unifying it.
It’s really more like unifying it that I’m doing, not so much changing the surfaces.
But be careful with this tool.
Don’t be attempted to go over everything and then you lose a lot of the surfaces.
It’s the same as in drawing, using a stump or whatever.
You have to be very disciplined with tools like that; otherwise, you destroy the nice
forms you already found, and you make a big mess.
It’s best to keep working to the end with a tool like this and just add a little bit
of clay at the time.
We’re still not finished—far from finished—but we still want to work a little bit longer
on the lips.
What takes me also a lot of concentration is the philtrum because if the philtrum has
too sharp of edges it is very distracting.
Remember, skin can never have a sharp edge anyway.
Even the philtrum seems like there is a sharper edge here.
If you make it really sharp it looks like it just draws too much attention there.
It cannot be because it’s skin so it has to be soft.
That is something we need to be very subtle about.
Like right now, not so happy still with what I did here.
Also, the contour of the lips—they need to be clear but not sharp.
Nothing should be sharp because it’s skin.
Let’s just add here a little bit and then unify it again.
Sometimes it’s okay to have it sharper, and then later going over with the tool, over
the corners, and then make it a little softer.
And then the lips are never completely symmetrical on anybody.
Let’s reduce here, the lower lip where it starts, it doesn’t have a whole lot of volumes.
It goes in and then it creates this teardrop volume here.
I want to make the upper lip a little larger because she has a nicer turn-down.
It’s very typical.
It’s kind of characteristic how her lips are shaped.
They’re very full in a very large kind of arch here.
If somebody has big features, we want to really take advantage of it.
It’s fun for sculpting.
I need to work from this side a little bit.
Okay, so this, the corner of the mouth is still chaotic here.
Before we get too obsessed with how the lips are shaped, we’ll go back to them
and make the corner of the mouth nicer.
I feel like we should work on the nostrils for a little bit because the symmetry is a
little off and leave the lips alone for a moment.
To make the nostrils work, it’s good to look from underneath and just see from underneath
how the nostrils are shaped.
Mine are a little asymmetric at the moment.
Hers are too, naturally.
Nobody’s nostrils are perfectly symmetrical.
We also don’t want to make them perfectly symmetrical—can’t by the way.
Also, the tip of the nose, let’s turn our model for a second so we can look at it
from the side.
I’m doing this also to shape the nostril from the side, how far it goes backward
and where it turns in.
Turning you to the front.
Okay, so I made some changes.
I saw that the eyelid needs to come a little bit forward.
I also saw on this side that underneath the lip it needs to be deeper in.
I’m doing that to see if the corner of the mouth is the
same length on both sides, and I think this side is a little not long enough.
Now I’m bringing in the…

Okay, I feel like I needed to enlarge her lips. They’re not just big enough.
Our lady here has really full lips.
And I already like it better.
When you make lips you need to make sure that the curvature is working.
Very often when you look from underneath it’s just too flat. That’s something I just try to change
by adding above the lip. I added material here.
That way I have a strong volume of the tooth line underneath it.
Therefore, I can also shape the lips bigger.
As I said, when it feels like something is—like the lips itself, if I will just add it here it will look weird.
Then we can shape the upper lip a little bit like making the wings here—
those are called wings too—a little bit more prominent.
Okay, so I’m going to look from this side. I haven’t looked from that for some time.
I’m going to turn you around. Now, let’s see.
Can you look a little bit towards me? Perfect.
Okay, so we’re at the end of the session for today. We were working on mainly starting to detail the features.
Working on the eyes, working on the nose, working on the mouth. It’s not finished.
I still see some symmetry issues on the right side of the portrait in comparison to the left side,
and there has to be much more detail to work through, and then it’s finishing the surface.
This is something that I would like to do next session, but for this session we got the profile worked through.
We got lots of detailing on the features. We locked in the neck, and we locked in more of the turban too.
I’m just going to show you where we’re at.
Okay, so the surface is still kind of rough. It’s still open so we can still work much more smoother on it.
Next time we’re going to fix the symmetry and work in the surface.