How to Chisel Sculpture Facial Details

Any sculptor will tell you that sculpting is a long learning process, one that takes your through many different stages and through the use of many different materials, and that is the way your really learn how to chisel sculptor facial details. Most sculptors started learning to sculpt facial detail from material that is easier to mold and chisel like wood first before going into more expensive and harder to work with materials. The reason you should start with wood is because it is more pliable than any of the stone materials, it is also much less expensive. When you are chiseling out facial details there are a few rules of thumb you need to keep in mind. These rules help you make the features you chisel seem more realistic. Sticking to these rules will show you how to chisel out facial features, but remember you also need a lot of practice:

Things You'll Need

• A high quality bench knife. This is the tool you will use the most
• A basic wood carving tools kit. These will be sold together as a set
• Sand paper.

Instructions

Chiseling The Face and Head are the Basis of the Face

1. Get the height of the face right. The face’s height is longer than the width by about 1 ½ times.

2. Form the head like a square. The side of the face is relative to the size of a square.

3. Carve the neck. To get the form of the neck you need to cut straight back and then angle your cut slightly down and then straight down.

4. Carve the angle from the forehead to the chin. There is about a 120-degree range from the forehead to nose and then back to the chin.

5. Divide the face. The face divides into three equal parts. The part from the top of the head to the eybrow, then the eyebrow to the end of the nose and then the bottom of the nose to the end of the chin.

6. Get the right angel from cheek to cheek. There is a 90 degree angle form the left cheek to the right cheek.

7. Chisel the temple area narrower than the forehead and the forehead is the only place on the head that can be flat. Don’t worry each side of the face is not symmetrical. But also make sure that the face is 5 eyes wide. Keep in mind the eye area is the widest part of the face.

Carving The Nose

1. Carve half in and then add half the nose needs to extend out of the face and the other half needs to extend into it. So you may need to add a wooden chiseled part of the nose here and glue it on.

2. Round the areas from the nose to the cheek and side of head.

3. Widen the nose. The nose is wider at the bottom and then you need to taper it in at about the halfway point and then back out at the end.

4. Chisel the nose so that the outside of the nostrils will line up with the inside corners of the eyes.

5. Chisel a ball on the end of the nose. Make sure that it is just a very small ball shape.

6. Don’t carve the inside of the nostrils until you finish everything else on the face. But when you do these are tapered back and not out.

Carving The Eyes

1. Make sure your eyes are in the middle part of the head. Some people want to place them too high but they are just above the center of the head.

2. Place the eyes right, The eyes need to be only one eye width apart.

3. Chisel the eyes in a rounded form and the same goes for the face.

4. Chisel the lower lid in. The bottom of the eyes are chiseled more into the face than the upper part of the eyes.

5. Carve the eyes out as small slits in the middle of the head.

6. Carve the shape of the pupil. The eyeball takes up most of the eye area and needs to be slightly rounded. These are not full circles just rounded.

Chiseling The Mouth

1. Place the mouth a third of the way from the nose and the base of the chin.

2. Round the mouth around the face. It is not flat.

3. Extend the mouth further out from the end of the nose.

4. Carve the bottom lip back under the top lip and the corners need to tuck under the top lip.

5. Carve dimple lines at the corners of the top lip.

6. Keep the ball of the chin small and remember that it sets back from the lips.

Tips & Warnings

• If you follow the above instructions and get a lot of practice doing several faces, you will eventually learn to carve faces. Of course, it will help if you take some kind of anatomy drawing class, so you know what the proportions should be.