Advanced Drawing: Project #2

This drawing is the reason why I broke my "not pulling any all nighters on a school night" oath that I took when I started college. Sure, I've stayed up almost all night on several nights, but I never went all the way, and I hadn't since high school. I've aged nearly a decade since high school, and I can definitely tell that my body isn't nearly as capable of it as it use to be. Nevertheless, I found myself in the garage with Mad Men playing in the background, and some micron pens glued to my hands. I was getting this drawing done and no one would stop me!

The process for this project seemed a bit more simple than the first one. On the first day we met on the ARLIS section of the library, and we were asked by my teacher to borrow some skulls that they had. I was happily surprised, for I had no idea that within the depths of this campus was a cornucopia of skulls and bones for me to borrow. There were a lot of neat skulls, including a few that I almost picked... like the skull of a wolverine, a bobcat, and a caribou. I kept going back to the black bear skull, and staring into its amazingly thin and intricate nasal bone. While bears are definitely an intensely amazing creature, I would be afraid to run into one while in the woods. Destined to be admired best at a distance, I felt compelled to pick the skull of the black bear.

The top part of the drawing includes three separate drawings of three different skull angles. One aspect of the assignment was to do the angles in three different ways, one way being high contrast, another being only in thick and thin lines, and the last drawing to be done realistically.

After drawing these different angles, we then had to make a drawing comprised of pieces from this top drawing. I was stumped on how to combine all of this information into a drawing at first, but once I finally had the inspiration flowing for an idea, it was a lot easier.

I decided to combine micron pen and graphite to give the image a heavily graphic style. I also really wanted a feeling of depth, so I drew the two spheres in the back to look like they are on a distant horizon, while also using a border to make it seem like the space was within a previously enclosed area. This was a lot of fun to draw, but it sure did deplete me of my ink reserves (more than I thought it would). It was worth it, though!