I’m continuing with my skull drawing. Actually, it’s kind of funny. You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to reach the point where I could post this image. It’s not that I’ve been drawing only skulls all this time. At some point, I saw a nice drawing of a horse. I find horses amazing creatures, so I started drawing them. I studied their skulls and anatomy and drew a horse. It took quite an intense amount of focus. Because I’m a man with other responsibilities, my daily drawing sessions couldn’t always happen on my own terms, which is extremely hard. Discipline and dedication are simply not enough! On top of that, I seemed to have forgotten how to draw hands, which I had been practising just before spending a month on horses. I started to worry that I would always forget the knowledge and thinking I had developed while drawing. So I decided to change tactics. I draw, take notes, and create a whole process. I write it down the way books explain things, so I’m creating my own art book. After practising only hands for months, I can refresh my horse drawing by going back to the horse chapter in my “book.” I’m starting to see the benefits and make progress. By now, I have a huge collection of documented progress and skills! Well, the same thing is happening with the skull. I started a year ago after seeing people doing caricatures and character designs. I wanted to do that too. Then I saw somebody post a very crisp planar representation of a skull, and I wanted to do that too. I studied and drew around my bike commute to work or while travelling to the dentist by train. Bit by bit, I was able to push it further. Eventually, I could at least draw a kind of robot head resembling a human face. Then I left it for a few months, came back to it, and pushed it further again, until I reached the point where I could post this. And I’m still nowhere near where I want to be. I realised that I don’t know anything about painting techniques. When should I use smudge? When should I use an oil or bristle brush? A wet brush? Dry bristles? What is actually bristle? Is not the same cast brush?! , and what makes one brush different from another? I don’t want to end up doing random things. Whenever I do something, I don’t care about the result as much as I care about learning something new and developing a workflow that works for me. Now I’m stuck with painting. Instead of editing my planar work, I used it as a map, randomly picked a brush without knowing how to use it, and just painted. This is where I ended up. I had a little bit of fun i learnt a tiny bit- not happy with that. Because this time I was focus on outcome. So I wasted lots of time! But i think in a sense it was progressing a bit, but I’m still not in control, and it isn’t expressive at all! Any feedback? Thank you!

The painting is really nice and the features are well drawn and dimensional. The only thing I noticed is that the ear and the back of the skull are too big. Also, the features are not lined up with each other. Really nicely done :)

This looks really nice, Tom :) I like how you honed in on using shapes to establish the planes of the face.

nice