Adding realistic texture to skulls - help?

[Phaleure]

I am fairly new at sculpting, but I have made successful scuplts and casts before. However they were normally non-organic and flat surfaces.

I was making some skull details to add to my most recent project, and think I have a good starting point, but I am missing that realistic grittyness.

Here are what I have so far:

They are pretty cartoony, and sort of flat. I have made a few changes to the dimensions to give them more depth, but I think that smooth glossy texture is just too fake. In fact they all have a really fake and cartoony look.

My reference is also slightly cartoony, but i'm looking to bring some realism to the sculpt to wake it up.

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for how I can give these guys some texture, to mimic an actual skull. I tried it myself, but was concerned that all I was doing was adding tool strokes, and I was hoping for something a bit more? I am working with Monster Clay, and these will eventually be cast in resin and added to my armor pieces.

 

[elro]

Hey there!

I work mainly with wed clay, but this should work on monsterclay:

The sharp arrow shaped tool to the very right. Ive found that 'wriggling' your hand along the surface gives a very nice jagged effect on the surface. Also recognising where cartlidge wouldve been on the bone, using the spike tool and randomly filling the area with dots looks quite nice on the final cast.

 

[El Duderino]

Orange peel, perfect for this.

 

[Phaleure]

Hey guys, thanks for the input, I gave it another go after looking at other sculptors work and trying to imitate the textures that they were able to achieve.

I actually found that the best trick to keeping your tool strokes soft so they have a natural look is use saran wrap and different weights of plastic bags ad a barrier between your sculpt and the tool.

Any critique?

 

[N2darkness]

Great progress! You can use crumpled up aluminum foil or other things that have texture as a stamp to help give some definition. You can use alcohol with a soft brush to help smooth out finger prints and tool lines.

 

[Phaleure]

Re-did all of them. Used a lot 3-d skull models to help me pull out more realistic shapes while still keeping with the basic shapes of the reference.