Tuesday 3 August 2010

Skull skill

I signed up for an Art Trader online workshop a couple of weeks ago and have been having such fun. I started with the Gothic Art one and have been learning how to draw little goth girls and associated goth bits and pieces. The course covers how to draw basic features, bodies, how to put together a goth girl, clothing, themes... the list goes on but you can find out more by visiting this link.

Anyway, the goth scene often involves skulls so I thought I would put together a little tutorial on drawing zany skulls. Skulls are often seen as white, cream, grey or even black but my idea is to make skulls that are a little more, well, zany. I love colour and don't see why skulls should always been the same. So this idea just seems to be a little different. If you look at the photos you'll be able to follow along with the text.


In the first photo we have figure 1. - the starting point. Draw a letter 'C' lying on its face, i.e. lying with the open end of the letter facing downward. You can vary this shape to be long and thin or short and fat. In figure 2. half of a slightly rounded rectangle is added to the opening of the 'C', extending downward. That's not a very clear description but I hope you can see from the photo what you have to do. You can make this rectangle as long or as short as you like or even make it slightly more triangular like the two skulls beneath. Figure 3. shows the features that I added to mine. Eye sockets don't have to be round or equal in size. Just do whatever you fancy.

Now, this is just a basic skull (drawn with a rather shaky hand too - sorry) but what makes them zany is that you can either fill them with colour using acrylics, markers, coloured pencil, etc or draw them on patterned paper like scrapbook paper or paper you have painted yourself. I have included a photo of some that I have made using both techniques.

The last three photos are of skulls I made and used in some creations. The first is a collection of inchies, the second two are collages I did for the Gothic Art course.



By the way, I loved the Gothic Art course so much I signed up for the Whimsical Mermaid class this week ;o) Even if you don't want to take a class you might want to check out their FREE online magazine. It's brilliant, full of information on ATCs, journals, altered art and related techniques.

4 comments:

Lori said...

You know, it constantly amazes me how the nicest people like the creepiest stuff, rofl! Nice tutorial on the skulls, Gillian, and your pieces are fabulous, albeit, somewhat freaking me out...lol....

Gillian McMurray said...

Oh Lori, what a charmer you are - LOL. Glad you like the tutorial and hope the skulls didn't freak you out too much :o)

Anonymous said...

I seriously love your blog.. Excellent colors & theme.
Did you develop this amazing site yourself?
Please reply back as I'm hoping to create my own blog and want to know where you got this from or what the theme is named. Kudos!

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Gillian McMurray said...

Hi and thanks for your comment. I am glad you like my blog colour and theme. The header is my own design and I just used one of the simple templates Blogger supplies as the base. You can fiddle around with the settings for text, borders, links, etc under the 'advanced' settings when you customize the template. It just takes a little patience and some experimentation. Good luck setting up your new blog.