Faces are the most complex structures to sculpt because even

 the simplest expression consists of many planes and valleys,

ridges and indentations.  The best book of facial expressions

 for the artist I have found is called "The Artist's Complete Guide

to Facial Expression", by Gary Faigin.  It has a wealth of examples

of various faces drawn in all manner of expressions.  It would

be a great addition to any figurative sculptors reference library.

  For this little tutorial I'll just stick to a smile.

As important as scale is to figurative sculpture, when you are doing

 fantasy work it's quite all right ( actually it's kind of expected) to

take some artistic license with shape and scale.  Often heads are

 bigger and arms and legs are longer or shorter than scale to make a

point about the character.  Brian Froud's faery illustrations are a

 perfect example.  He renders some characters with extreme

realism and others with hyper exaggerated head or limbs.

The face below is a young faery boy and will have a larger than

scale head and eyes.  This accentuates his faery nature and youth

as well as makes the face easier to sculpt.  Don't ever let anyone kid

you, sculpting smaller is much harder than sculpting large.

For this face I started with a small egg shape of compressed aluminum

foil, about 1/2" in diameter.  I covered it with a layer of clay about 1/8"

thick and formed it into an egg shape with a chin.

Lightly scribe lines at the halfway points vertically and horizontally.

The eyes will sit on the horizontal half way mark.  I make a hollow

indentation on either side of the center about one eye width apart

then press what ever eye I am using into it and press the clay up

around the eye.  You can use glass eyes like the ones shown or

white glass beads or steel ball bearings.  Whatever you like that

represents the eye and won't melt at clay curing temperatures.

In the picture above I have inserted the eyes and then pinched and

pressed the clay into the beginnings of a nose.  I also marked where

the mouth will be and started shaping the cheeks up a little.

Above I've formed two snakes of flesh clay for the upper and lower

eyelids (please pardon the picture quality)  The third small snake is

white clay for teeth and will be used later.

Here I've formed the two small snakes of clay into lids, above and

below one eye.  These are smoothed and pressed into place.  A thinner

 eyelid looks more alert and a thicker lid covering more of the eye looks

more drowsy or comical.  I've also begun to define the nose and lips.

I push the clay up and away from the lip area to form the creases below

the cheeks.  The remaining mound in the lip area is pushed up into lip

shapes with a dental tool and the indentation below the lips that makes

the chin is formed.  I do both sides of the features at the same time so

the face remains symmetrical.

At this point I have placed the head on a wire armature extending

up into the foil through the neck to make handling easier.  If you

are doing a full body sculpt you can start with the armature wire up

into the foil or slide the neck onto the wire later as I've done here.

 If you are doing just a head, hands and feet to put on a cloth body

you can make a small (1/8") hole in the neck just before baking to

glue a body armature into later.  Along the way I continually refine

the features whenever I look at the face.  Each time you look at it from

a different direction you will see things to adjust.  Smoothing a cheek,

deepening a crease, pushing slightly this way or that to bring the

features closer to what you have in mind.  I don't think an exact

method for this can be taught, it's more a matter of training the eye

to observe more closely.  Whenever you see a face in a magazine or

at the market you begin to make little observances.  You might think to

yourself "Oh, that little indentation near the nose goes just so."

Observing reality from all different angles is the best teaching

you can have.

Here are the beginnings of an ear.  I start with a fat little snake of clay

and coil it part way around.  Then I take one of my small, spoon shaped

dental tools and smooth it up in the direction of a little pointed ear.

Because of their very small size, these ears don't have all the intricate detail

of a real ear but representing the curve into the ear at the front and the

groove around the outside help to make it more realistic.  Once I have

two ears that match I place them on either side of the head and use a small

spoon tool to press the inside of the ear into the head, leaving the top and

back of the ear sticking out.  If you look at a head from the side, the front

edge of the ear sits just about on the center line from front to back.

Now that his ears are placed and smoothed onto the sides of his head I start

refining his facial expression.  I cut his mouth open and place the small

snake of white clay for his teeth at the top of his mouth.  The edge of

an exacto knife works well to cut the separations between teeth.  I will

 continue shaping the lips back over the teeth and draw the sides up

into a smile.  Now I will press the curve of his cheeks up a bit and the

 corners of his eyes also to represent more of a smiling expression.

At this point I will set the face aside for a few hours or a day and come

back to it with fresh eyes to refine and assess the work done already.

In the case of this face I decided that I didn't like the look of his eyes so

I carefully cut a slit from the corner of each eye through the side of the

head and removed the glass eyes and replaced them with a slightly

smaller white glass bead.  The eye socket needed a little clay bed to sit

the now smaller eye ball into so it would not be too sunken into the head.

Don't be afraid to do surgery like this if the face doesn't meet your

expectations.  I try never to let anything go thinking it will do even if

I am not happy with it.  Once the doll is finished that bit I didn't do my

best on will haunt me.

Once all the sculpting is finished and smoothed to the best of my ability

I take a small filbert paint brush with a very small amount of Sculpy

 diluent and very gently brush over the surface of the face to remove

any tool marks.  If you can, you should sit with the face in direct,

natural light for this.  I sit right in front of a window with the light falling

 evenly on both sides of the face.  You will see many more marks to be

smoothed out this way and the quality of the finished face will really

show the extra care you took.