Purchased SpeedSculpt for Blender, My thoughts.

SpeedSculpt is an addon for Blender that is a collection of utilities and tools packed into a menu that sits in the side tool bar. I imagine the things it does are things you could always do in Blender, but the addon short-cuts all the complicated processes and makes them less of a workflow killer. One of the things that attracted me to it was a feature that allows you to merge shapes together and convert them into dense meshes that can then be sculpted.

This feature allowed me to sculpt over the merged mesh to give this model a claymation look.

Below is the model as it stands at the moment. I'm getting a hand crafted look, at least it's what I'm aiming for.

I recommend watching the YouTube videos about Speed Sculpt to decide if you need this addon, it's a very low priced addition to Blender, I've barely used any of it's options so far yet it's already opened up possibilities for me in Blender.

4th Blender sculpt

I tried hard to make a cartoon version of the last head and it seems to have turned out all realistic and noble again. I'll push on with it, I guess it's another stylized head like so many others out there.

The finished version.

HDRI's from HDRI Haven are now all entirely free

Greg Zaal, who runs HDRI Haven from Blender community has gone rogue and decide to release all his HDRI content for free from now on, you might consider supporting him on patreon but it's not required, no sign in or acknowledgments required. They're some of the best quality out there in various resolutions 1k to 16 K unclipped.

I've downloaded everything off his site and put some of them to the test below.

Blender sculpt exercise number 3

Primarily doing this guy for the muttonchops, at this stage a little too realistic, probably because of the photographic reference.

Painted. More realistic in proportions than I intended but I'll go with it for now, the body will be done as a separate piece.

Here's the final. Yes those eyes look flat, but maybe I like it like that.

I'm trying a free add-on called Light Studio, which is similar to HDR Light Studio, this allows me to light interactively in a rendered view so I can experiment and see results live. Below is a more somber take.

I put in some round eyes and rendered with a HDRI, no post production on this one.

Blender Sculpting exercise number 2

Another go at a sculpt, I drew a rough concept to give me direction.

Up-dated, initial texture paint.

And this might be the finished version for now.