Tom Sculpting

 After many hours of sculpting I believe I have gotten to a point where I can't get any closer to creating my own face. I think that while close, the sculpt is a little off being a replica of myself, but I believe that if I were to return to the idea further down my journey as my skills improve that I will be able to get much closer.

The brow and eyes were something I struggled a lot with to get close to mine, I spent a few hours going back and forth making sure I could at least get somewhat close. For this sculpt, I have avoided adding hair and skin detail, and even breaking symmetry as I believe that this ended as more of a study rather than a final piece.

The topology of the sculpt was very stretched near the eyelids too which didn't help much with capturing the shape I needed. I tried to fix this by dynameshing the mesh, which DID work, however working on the sculpt after that was difficult as the mesh was too smooth, and there were no subdivision levels to bounce back onto to graft in detail where I needed. Because of this, I ended up undoing a good 2 hours worth of work so that I could get back to a comfortable point that worked better for the stage I was at.

Another thing I constantly found myself doing was reshaping the entirety of the head and jawline, as every time I shaped it, it didn't look right.

I feel like the similarities are there, however I need to better my skills before I attempt something as complex as a self portray again, as the sculpt is more of an aged / uncanny valley version of myself.
 

Another aspect of my face that I struggled with was my cheeks, as from some angles they appear round and fat but from the front they are more gaunt, which I found extremely difficult to translate over to the sculpt itself. The smile lines going from my nose to the corner of my mouth on the sculpt constantly appears deeper than it should, no matter what different techniques I try to get it looking more subtle. Another issue I found was that the lighting in my room constantly made the volumes of fat around my face appear different with each angle I took a picture, including when I went into the bathroom with a mirror in that also had completely different lighting, which in turn made me look even more different.