student work, skulls

life drawing two ~ fall 2009
skull, profile; by sara g.

life drawing two ~ fall 2009
tilted skull; by ryan l.

life drawing two ~ fall 2009
skull, 3/4 anterior view; by kaitlin a.

A Man and a Woman Examining Orchids which Grow from a Skull

An unusual drawing of a skull that I thought you might enjoy. It comes from artsconnected.org, a newly completed website that searches the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Arts Center collections. From their website :

Explore the combined collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center through hundreds of new features in ArtsConnectEd. Search over 100,000 resources in the Art Finder, including works of art, texts, audio, video, and interactive resources. Save and customize items in the redesigned Art Collector. Comment, tag and rate everything!

skull image

Originally uploaded by moominsean

found this on flickr––I enjoy a lot of the images in moominsean's photostream, but thought this one was appropriate for class right now.

keep this in your mind as we begin to incorporate the skull with the fleshed head.

what a nice self-portrait--expressive use of the skull and live face in combination.

skull, cross contour

here is a nice cross contour drawing, side view, that i found online.


notice the darker lines of the cheek bone and zygomatic arch and the lighter lines that try to describe the recessed area of the cranium behind them.


also see how the shape below the zygomatic arch is flat and way too dominant in the drawing due to its being filled in with black (too much contrast) and being too closed (comes forward in space, especially with bottom convex edge.


i'd also say a little more size to the cranium especially in back would help even out the proportions, and the angle of the face is more vertical than i like to see it.


the big thing to notice here, is everyone (or almost everyone) shies away from dealing with the cranium when it comes to its 3D form. if you can learn to do this (it is time-consuming and difficult), you will have learned something that many think is too difficult or time-consuming to accomplish.


so... keep working!