How to sculpt and draw a skull

How to sculpt and draw a skull

In the Life Drawing Academy personal tutoring course, students learn how to draw realistic portraits with correct anatomy and proportions. To begin, they learn the anatomy of a human head. This topic includes such tasks as:

• Making a life-size paper model of a human skull with low-polygon planes that help to understand its construction
• Sculpting a skull in oil-based clay
• Drawing diagrams with the skull proportions in the full-face and profile views
• Making long-study drawings of a skull from life from various points of view
• Making fast sketches of a skull at various angles
• Studying bones of the skull
• Learning muscles of a human head

These anatomy exercises prepare the Life Drawing Academy students to portrait drawing, which is explained in depth and practiced in numerous tasks.

One of the students, Rose, receives personal tutoring at Life Drawing Academy and is now working on the task of sculpting a skull. She asked questions on how to attempt sculpting and the academy tutors, Vladimir London and Natalie Richy created this video to help her. This is what personal tutoring at Life Drawing Academy is about - every student gets unlimited personal tutoring, video lessons, templates, diagrams and step-by-step instructions. If some extra help is required, the tutors will answer every question, provide demos and even make on-demand videos. This tutoring is unlimited and comes for a very low one-time fee. No other art college would ever provide such service to their students.

This personal tutoring course is truly unique. It is suited for artists of all levels, including complete beginners. For example, the low-polygon paper skull model you see in this video is one of the best paper skull models in the world today. It has realistic proportions and anatomy. Rose made this model at home from the first attempt using the template designed by Vladimir London, her tutor. This shows that even a beginner can make a model at home and draw it from life using templates and step-by-step instructions that are unique to this course.

Because Rose has never sculpted anything as complicated as a human skull before, it will be a great experience for her. This exercise will also show how a person with no prior experience can take the tutors guidance and grow as an artist at a rapid pace. We are looking forward to receiving reports from Rose on her progress and will be happy to answer her future questions. Hopefully, Rose would make video reports that we could share with you.

If you want to achieve the advanced level of drawing skills, take the Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course

To learn good drawing techniques, enroll in the Life Drawing Academy course: