Three Finished Skulls

I really enjoyed this project a lot because it allowed me to get back to the basics of observation and drawing. Trusting the shape of the skull and my knowledge of the skull, and not necessarily what my brain was telling me what I saw, was definitely a challenging but worthwhile study. These three skulls here are a culmination of three different drawing sessions of about 3 hours a piece, where I set up a skull in front of me and drew from it. I tried not to focus too much on shading, but let my cross contour lines intersect in many places, especially ones in shadow, to give the illusion of depth. I think these three drawings are pretty successful, but of course there is always tons of room for improvement. I wish I didn’t darken certain areas as much, but with using conté crayon, once you darken you really can’t erase. I also wish I would have left more of my mistakes and process in this drawing to give my skulls more movement, because in critiques I noticed the stronger drawings left their mistakes in the drawings, where in mine, I have erased most of them out (or they are too light to notice clearly.)

My favorite out of the three drawings would have to be my side view. I think the proportions are really accurate and I threw a few cross contour lines in the drawing to emphasize the 3-d part of the skull, and I think I did this successfully! Cross contour has always been a difficult concept for me to grasp, so I was happy that I was able to some lines without flattening out my drawing. I also am happy with my back view because even though I struggled a little bit with it, in the end I didn’t give up and I think it does look pretty proportional.