Just thought Id post it.
Early days, waiting for 2.5 before I start sculpting and texturing.
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Very nice model … c’mon, man you can already do your scuplting and texturing in 2.49 so why or what should you wait for ?
Nice work, and you will be waiting a long time for 2.5, possibly as long as a whole year 
theres no reason to delay for some tool you think you’d like in 2.5 if your having an issue with mesh res, you can create a isolated window to sculpt in with control shift leftclick drag - you get a retangluar area to work in. the mes could can then be enormous,
how does your mum feel about being a 3d model? you could make a very good gift out of it…
Very nice work so far, though some of the structure of the ears looks either unfinished or missing some usual features.
I agree with the other posters – don’t hold your breath on 2.5, the current version(s) have everything you’ll need to do a full-tilt treatment for this portrait.
Your mom looks a bit like my grandmother 
Let’s see some progress 
@Serialsiner, Normal maps are too weak in 2.49 to get a nice wrinkly face imo. 2.5 has removed the cap at 25 (I’ll take credit for that suggestion thank you).
@hessiess. Yikes a year?? I heard Beta in about a month!
@dvandamme. Cheer, I didn’t know about the shift click, not sure I know what you mean but it sounds interesting. Oh and my mum doesn’t like looking that old I’m afraid-although it is an accurate representation. (she really isn’t going to like it when I put the wrinkles on!)
@chipmasque. Yeah the ears are a bit ruff because they’ll mostly be covered by hair. I refer you to my above gripe about normal maps.
@Zarnik. Yes thats because I’m probably as old as your mum.
Also I’m in no rush and I’m in the middle of a Law degree so I’m currently preoccupied with Trusts, the International court of Justice and medical negligence…
Have you thought of doubling up the normal map channels? That allows you to overcome many of the value limits in the texture channels; I do it often to get values > 1.0 for normalized channels, or to exceed the posted speed limit on others ;). Also, you can do some image enhancement tricks that will intensify TS normal maps as well, though you have to be careful since the RGB balance in the map hues can’t be warped too far or things get odd.
how do you double up the normal map? Just assign more channels to the map?
Yeah, just use the normal map twice in the same Material.
Yikes a year?? I heard Beta in about a month!
Ton stated that he wanted to get 2.5 finished sometime before the next Blender conference, which will be in a year.
And personally I wouldn’t rely on the beta' version being reliable or usable, going on the number of problems the Durian team had while demoing things at the conference, I guess its actually more of anAlpha’ release just so that people can find all the bugs
@Zarnik. Yes thats because I’m probably as old as your mum.
Are you 48 years old? O.o
Nvm, your mom is sexy… No offence…
Great start, i can see the character there at this early stage, a very thoughtful beginning.
Strange taste…guess it takes all kinds. I like the work, good to see an older woman being modeled.
That control shift is a neat trick, but er, how do you reset it so that you can see the whole model again?
This Manual page should help you out a lot:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Modelling/Meshes/Sculpting
how Freudian.
Excuse me?
[offtopic]
reading a book or two wouldn’t hurt. Lots of intresting things old Freud had to say about men and their mothers.
@Zarnik first cow’s udders:eek: now old ladies wow!
not to derail this great thread even further( i have edited my post to answer tmcthree question), to answer you in short tmcthree my father bought me a set of the Britainica Great books collection, I have everything from Euclid, Homer, Dante, Newton, Einstein to Freud. Its a set of 66 books so any Western work from literature to Science that was considered big or earth shattering I probabley have.
[offtopic]
great work thus far but that ear needs some love, if you have made the rest so well might as well go the whole nine yards
Oh, and which particular books of Freud have you read?