Howlin' Wolf was an American blues musician and songwriter. He is widely recognized as one of the most influential performers of his time. I wanted to create his portrait as a tribute to an artist who contributed to the course of musical history.
A major challenge during this project was identifying the color tone and physical properties of Howlin' Wolf's skin, as most of his photos were taken in black and white or were artificially colorized. This meant that I only had a vague idea of what my final renders should look like. More than this, I didn't have much information about what camera and lens were used for these photographs (taken in 1968) which led to a lot of trial and error to get an image that felt accurate.
All the details (including the pores and micro-details) on his face are hand-sculpted to match Howlin' Wolf's unique facial features.
Below are some renders (left) which I composited to match the look and aging of my main reference images (right).
Gallery
X-gen interactive grooming layers and guides
Cloth Simulation in Marvelous Designer
Body topology
