Basic Sculpting in Maya

I didn't really understand how to sculpt surfaces in Maya, so I decided to try out the sculpting tool on a sphere in order to explore how it worked. After messing around for a bit, I decided to sculpt the Earth. First, I drew the outline of the continents but I realised that the polycount wasn't high enough to achieve the accuracy that I wanted.

As you can see, I increased the number of polys substantially from the first attempt. This allowed me to sculpt much more detail from the sphere. However I wasn't completely happy with the second attempt as I had been sculpting the Earth from memory. For my third attempt, I projected a map of Earth onto the sphere - this substantially increased the accuracy of the sculpt.

I was happy with the end result, and had gained an understanding of how the sculpting tool works. However I think for more precise models, it would be more viable to move vertices individually rather than rely on the sculpting tool.