Electric-Eye
Skull and Calipers
Lately I've been taking advice from folks like Ryan Kingslein, and Edouard Lanteri.
One of the main things I'm getting out of their advice, is that if you want to be able to sculpt, even in Zbrush, then you've got to know your anatomy. Understand the underlying causes of the surface forms you're trying to copy. That explains the skull.
The calipers are for measuring. Not necessarily for measuring the model of the skull, but for measuring the features of your model, so that you can transfer them to clay, either directly, or at some proportion. (Though I've determined that the model skull is in fact smaller than my own, probably closer to the size of my mom's head, though larger, of course than that of my five-year-old nephew.
People who have studied art are probably familiar with the idea of measuring figures in terms of heads. A figure 7 1/2 heads tall should be about average, but one 8 heads tall is idealized. People who are more into drawing, modeling or sculpting, may realize that the average face is likewise constructed to be about 5 eyes wide, whether the ears are included in this or if it only goes the the widest part of the bone structure seen from a front orthographic view is something you get different answers about from different sources, and this average face is also constructed to be about 7 eyes tall. 5x7 makes a good portrait, no? The astute reader may also know that this lore of proportions for the figure in art comes to us from the canon of Polykleitos, one of the most celebrated sculptors of ancient Greece, and has been puzzled over by the Roman architect, Vitruvius, and through his writings, inspired Leonardo da Vinci, to draw the Vitruvian Man, the iconic figure of a man with two pairs of outstretched arms, and two pair of legs, straight and spread, touching the inside of a circle and a square overlapped around him.
Where do these proportions come from? Why use such odd units as heads and eyes rather than feet and inches?
These rules of measuring probably derive from measurements made for sculpture, with calipers, and the most artistically relevant body parts were chosen, for their importance, and because one could easily see them straight-on, while the model held a pose. Proportional units were chosen, because sculptors work at many scales, life size, half life size, miniature figurines and colossal monuments.
Calipers allow one to take straight-line measurements from points on opposite sides of curved surfaces. A great variety of them exist for measuring a variety of objects for many purposes, plumbing, jewelery-making, gunsmithing etc. Most of these consist of a claw-like pair of straight-edges that slide along each other with a graduated ruler. This, by contrast, is more of a curved compass, just two flat pieces of metal with a stiff joint, so that a measurement can be taken from two points, and and transferred, to the clay or to a place where a measurement can be recorded, without the length getting longer or shorter when transferred.
On a photographic note, I might mention that knowing the strobist technique, of placing the flash off-camera, and bouncing it from a wall helps to get a very natural looking diffused light coming from the left, and that the advice in the book, "Light, Science and Magic," about considering the family of angles reflected in a metal surface helped me to determine how the calipers could be visible and look natural in a photo.
Like it? Would send me some bitcoin as a tip?
1H76GsGpfkyg2PtwnsZnTYgED3NinWgsG6
Or QR code here: www.flickr.com/photos/sightrays/8672657341/
Skull and Calipers
Lately I've been taking advice from folks like Ryan Kingslein, and Edouard Lanteri.
One of the main things I'm getting out of their advice, is that if you want to be able to sculpt, even in Zbrush, then you've got to know your anatomy. Understand the underlying causes of the surface forms you're trying to copy. That explains the skull.
The calipers are for measuring. Not necessarily for measuring the model of the skull, but for measuring the features of your model, so that you can transfer them to clay, either directly, or at some proportion. (Though I've determined that the model skull is in fact smaller than my own, probably closer to the size of my mom's head, though larger, of course than that of my five-year-old nephew.
People who have studied art are probably familiar with the idea of measuring figures in terms of heads. A figure 7 1/2 heads tall should be about average, but one 8 heads tall is idealized. People who are more into drawing, modeling or sculpting, may realize that the average face is likewise constructed to be about 5 eyes wide, whether the ears are included in this or if it only goes the the widest part of the bone structure seen from a front orthographic view is something you get different answers about from different sources, and this average face is also constructed to be about 7 eyes tall. 5x7 makes a good portrait, no? The astute reader may also know that this lore of proportions for the figure in art comes to us from the canon of Polykleitos, one of the most celebrated sculptors of ancient Greece, and has been puzzled over by the Roman architect, Vitruvius, and through his writings, inspired Leonardo da Vinci, to draw the Vitruvian Man, the iconic figure of a man with two pairs of outstretched arms, and two pair of legs, straight and spread, touching the inside of a circle and a square overlapped around him.
Where do these proportions come from? Why use such odd units as heads and eyes rather than feet and inches?
These rules of measuring probably derive from measurements made for sculpture, with calipers, and the most artistically relevant body parts were chosen, for their importance, and because one could easily see them straight-on, while the model held a pose. Proportional units were chosen, because sculptors work at many scales, life size, half life size, miniature figurines and colossal monuments.
Calipers allow one to take straight-line measurements from points on opposite sides of curved surfaces. A great variety of them exist for measuring a variety of objects for many purposes, plumbing, jewelery-making, gunsmithing etc. Most of these consist of a claw-like pair of straight-edges that slide along each other with a graduated ruler. This, by contrast, is more of a curved compass, just two flat pieces of metal with a stiff joint, so that a measurement can be taken from two points, and and transferred, to the clay or to a place where a measurement can be recorded, without the length getting longer or shorter when transferred.
On a photographic note, I might mention that knowing the strobist technique, of placing the flash off-camera, and bouncing it from a wall helps to get a very natural looking diffused light coming from the left, and that the advice in the book, "Light, Science and Magic," about considering the family of angles reflected in a metal surface helped me to determine how the calipers could be visible and look natural in a photo.
Like it? Would send me some bitcoin as a tip?
1H76GsGpfkyg2PtwnsZnTYgED3NinWgsG6
Or QR code here: www.flickr.com/photos/sightrays/8672657341/