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.