Quote -
If I tried to make a sketch before-hand (as if I could) I'd be limiting myself to what I could draw. Which is not a lot.

this is why i tend to post in threads about sketching.  that's a common pre-conception, and it's completely inaccurate.  you don't need to be able to draw something.  you need to be able to sketch.  that means make enough of an indicator so that it means something to you.  i've asked my boyfriend what he thinks of sketched concepts.  he knows me better than anyone else in the world, and he never has a clue about what i'm trying to do at that point.

that's the heart of why it's totally different than "sketching" in Poser.  you don't sketch in Poser, you pose.  the object is in its complete and finished form.  sure you can add stuff, move things around, change camera angle, but that's utterly different than working with just a  few lines and shapes. even working in 3d is different, because a very important aspect of sketching is working in only two dimensions, and dealing the flattened composition.

if working in 3d was the same as sketching, then artists would have ditched sketch books centuries ago, and just spent time posing their models instead.  but they started with sketches, and sketched their models, because that reduction to the most important lines, the most important attributes, can help one better focus and compose one's piece than working with a finished project.  as well as train the eye to see those primary lines and shapes instead of the complexity in front of them.   artists still use sketch books today, and if it was the same to work with the whole object at once, all representational art students would need is a camera.  

that isn't to say artists back in the day didn't spend lots of time posing their model or the elements of their pictures, or that cameras aren't great tools.  just yesterday, i picked up a pizza with my boyfriend, and this woman was sitting on a loading dock smoking, and i told him, "everything about her is just perfect, and i don't know how to capture it yet.  her pose, how she's holding the cigarette, the towel hanging out of her pocket, her cap, everything.  just like that, but with totally different lighting."  there was a light directly above her, but it was too early to be dark and way too early for it to be on.  but that would have been perfect.  and his reaction was that we need to carry our cameras everywhere.  i not only agreed, i still wish i had had my camera.

so i don't think there's only one way to work. 

deciding to cut one way out of one's repetoire is a perfectly good and legitimate way to limit one's chosen techniques.  limiting one's choice of techniques is good and completely necessary.   i don't model at the moment and have only played with making textures.  i've only dabbled at renders that implement Global Illumination, caustics and other aspects of "high-end" renderers.   are there lots of people who work in Poser without the benefit of specularity and SSS maps? are there lots who don't model their own stuff?  do many render in Poser, with limited options?  oh, definitely, and many of them are excellent.  but all of those techniques can add something uniquely useful.

i've often thought of posting my process, but i've never thought anyone would be interested.  a lot of my stuff is highly postworked, and some of it is barely postworked at all.  i use different techniques with different images, and there are times when i wonder whether it would help someone to show what i do.  i will say, i'd certainly be interested in seeing the process of other artists, so i certainly encourage others to do so.

oh, and i always learned that  art before the Renaissance wasn't flat because they hadn't learned about perspective yet.  iirc, it was because it was considered kind of unholy in the "Dark Ages" to try to depict anything but holy figures, and even they shouldn't be fully personified.  i think art work was supposed to suggest a holy figure, but not lock him or her into one form in people's minds.  lots of different forms of  perspective were used in different parts of the world (orthogonal in Japan, for instance) , and they  all stemmed from the norms and beliefs of the culture.  1 and 3 point perspective (with some interesting fudges- a lot is deliberately incorrect and a lot involves codified and acceptable camera views, and we've come to see the incorrect stuff as correct) comes into vogue when a substantial middle class who can afford  to patronize the art emerges, the Church changes its mind about how holy figures can be depicted, and art  becomes more subject to the likes of individuals instead of tightly controlled by the traditions of a culture/established power (for instance, the Church).  lots of innovations in technology produced accurate perspective, but i thought that not being deemed a heretic or blasphemous came first?  at least as far as i remember from university.