How Do You Make an Ear, Do You Play It by Ear?
As a 3D artist, I often like to challenge myself by figuring out how to do things I haven't done yet, without watching a tutorial on how to do it. Oftentimes, when I watch a tutorial in Youtube, it's only to watch a demonstration of how to use certain tools or features in the software I use.
When it comes to the creative or "art part" of my job, or something that requires delving deep into my traditional art background, I find that I have everything I need in my head. And that's from all of my four decades of experience creating art and doing it by figuring things out on my own.
It's often only the technical aspects that I have to do some research on. But, that's until I have to create something that involves knowledge of human anatomy. It's a subject that straddles the line that puts it between art and science. It's an endeavor an artist cannot deal with, without having to refer to some amount of technical information, from books or the Internet, or even our own bodies.
The human ear is no exception. And, to create one, I had to look at pictures of it first. I did not look at Youtube videos of how to do it, so as not to influence me in any way. I sculpted it the same way I would draw it, doing it from memory and figuring out the steps along the way, but with occasional glances at the reference image of the previous sculpt. I "played it by ear", so to speak.
In the two pictures above are two sculpts I made of an ear. The first is actually the result of a second attempt to sculpt one and record a timelapse video it. The picture below is the result of my first sculpt, but one I forgot to record, that eventually became the reference image which I based my second attempt on.
You can see the obvious differences in quality between the two, as the first sculpt shows a cleaner, smoother surface compared to the roughness of the second. And both ears are partly based on my own, and another one I modeled in Blender back in 2016, which happens to be the ear of a girl I dated. See the picture below.
Timelapse Video
In this video I demonstrate one of the ways one can sculpt an ear. This shows how I would do it for sculpting practice or for quick concept art creation. For production work, I would do it differently, by creating a base model similar to the one in the third picture above. Then, I would attach it to the head, and begin sculpting the details in.
More Head Shots!
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This is the first complete head I've done in Blender. I had to stop working on the other one I blogged about previously, because I had been asked to concentrate more on creating more "normal-looking" humans for now, instead of monster-type creatures or characters. This poor head will be my guinea pig for my facial anatomy sculpt studies of the various ethnic groups, and ages. The same will be done on a female head, which I have yet to sculpt.
Ok, that's all for now. You will see more sculpting and 3D modeling sessions soon. So stay tuned for them, and also for the next parts of the blog about the green turtle I'm sculpting for 
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This blog was created with eSteem Surfer, Blender, Shotcut, and GIMP.