It sounded like a fun project so I jumped at the chance. I have to say that I felt a bit rusty at first. When I was very young I would draw constantly, sitting in my room filling paper after paper with doodles and portraits, but in my teens the focus shifted to music and I stopped drawing for years, save a short stint I did in art school.
To dust off the cobwebs I did a series of postcard sized Tikis with acrylics and crayons which I ransacked from my kids' crayon bucket.
After that I began sketching the skulls. For two of the skulls on the sides meant to face each other, I drew a template so they'd match. The middle one I just drew straight on the paper, stylizing the lines (I love the shapes and curves on the flames and clouds on Tibetan thangka paintings, so there's a tiny nod to that direction in there).
I used some sepia watercolor for shading the skulls and worked several layers of color on the backgrounds. The skulls themselves got some watercolor and acrylic for the bottom layers, after which I pencilled in the lines and added more color. I wanted each skull to have a flower on it and be tattoo inspired.
For the middle skull I decided to add some metallic details.
I finished the paintings with two layers of gloss varnish. During the whole duration of the project my kids were little angels and didn't add any details behind my back nor did they leave fingermarks on any drying surfaces, which I'm really grateful for! Thank you sweethearts.
The finished result:
The skulls left the house yesterday to travel to their new home with the lovely Finnish couple. I was very happy they loved the paintings. I definitely had fun getting back to painting and drawing. Seeing me work on the skulls one night in the kitchen my father in law had a great idea and suggested I'd make murals for the house with some leftover paint they had in storage. That may well be the next project I'll tackle.
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