Drawing a Skull with Charcoal

In this lesson, we’ll work on stipple paper by the Bee Paper Company and complete the drawing of a skull with charcoal. We’ll only use compressed charcoal pencils and sticks. This unique paper features a very unique surface that is heavily textured, which will be important in our final drawing.

Here’s a look at the completed drawing…

See also: How to Draw a Glass of Water with Graphite and Charcoal

Here’s a look at the photo reference…

Graphite Pencil Sketch

We’ll begin the drawing with a HB graphite pencil. I want my marks to be visible, but I want them to be light. We begin by finding a location for the top of our skull and the bottom of our skull.

Then we find the areas where we see strong contrast. I draw lines where I see an edge or a difference in value between dark and light locations. Details are purposely left out. While I’m striving for accuracy, I’m also leaving myself open to some discrepancies between the photo reference and the drawing.

Shading with Charcoal

With my graphite sketch in place, I can switch over to a charcoal pencil for shading and texture. There is no blending or smudging, I’m just going to work with the texture of the paper.

I’m paying attention to the areas of highlight or the areas of lightest value. We want to leave these areas open as we’re adding the charcoal. You’ll also notice that I’m starting on the left side of the picture plane to work my way to the right and lower down the picture plane. I’m doing this simply to keep the palm of my hand out of the way of the drawing so I don’t smear any of the graphite that I’ve applied.

I’m going to go ahead and put a little bit of the dark value behind the back edge of the skull so that I have some contrast there. That will help me better evaluate the values as I add them to the drawing.

Before working too far down the front of the skull, I’m going to go ahead and add some tone and value to the top part of the skull. I’m using an extremely light touch with the charcoal pencil. You can see I’m holding the pencil very low down on the shaft so that it’s just barely making contact with the surface of the paper. As we make strokes with the pencil, we’re considering the cross contours or the plane in which each one of the marks is crossing over. This is going to affect the directional stroke that I make, and it’s also going to help create the illusion of form.

See also: Charcoal Drawing of a Skull in 45 Minutes

Working Down the Skull

As we continue to work our way down the picture plane, I’m going to add a little bit more of that dark background at the top. Then it’s back to the center part of the skull, working in one of the eye openings. In this eye opening on the right, we can see some subtle shifts of value inside. Since this sketch is loose and quick and since the surface dictates it, we’re not going to include all the details that we see. We just want an impression of the skull. We want a loose sketch, and this paper helps us to achieve that loose look.

Our light source is originating from the right side of the picture plane. This means that all of the parts of the skull that stick out or protrude are going to be lighter on the right side compared to the left side. Even still, we still need to make some of the values on the right side a little bit darker, so instead of leaving them white, we’re going to create areas of gray. We just want to make sure that our value contrast is there so that we preserve the illusion of the light source in the final drawing.

As we work down to the lower part of the skull and in the teeth section, I’m going to give an impression of the teeth, without defining all of the details. Since we only really clearly see the right side of the bottom of the jawbone, I’m only going to include a range of value here. On the left side, we’re going to focus mainly on the shadowed shapes that we see.

Finishing the Skull Drawing

Now we’ll finish the drawing by simply filling in the background with a heavy application of compressed charcoal.

Now our drawing of a skull with charcoal is complete.

Spooky Skull Sketch – Conclusion

A skull is certainly a spooky subject, but it’s also a great subject for practicing drawing. Every skull is slightly different and the light can be dramatically different. This provides a nice challenge. Skulls have been the subject of countless artworks and is one of my favorite things to draw. I hope this lesson helps you draw your own skull.

The Most Important Secret to Drawing

Who doesn’t want to be able to draw and do it well? The problem is that most people believe they can’t draw even though they’d love to be able to do it. Well, the good news is that drawing is a skill that anyone can learn and develop. And just like any other skill, drawing requires a bit of knowledge and practice. Now, the practice is up to you, but in this lesson, I’m going to give you one major piece of knowledge that may dramatically affect your drawing ability.

See also: Why You Believe You Can’t Draw and What to do About It

Many people believe that drawing is about making marks, and yes, this is true. You must make marks to make a drawing, but there’s a lot more to it than just making marks. Our drawings are the results of making marks on a surface, but the true essence to drawing is about what happens between your ears.

Michelangelo is quoted as saying, “A man or woman paints with his brains, not with his hands.” But what does this mean?

It means that our brains are actually more involved in the drawing process than our hands.

Drawing From Imagination

Now, let’s see if we can go deeper to understand the quote above. We’ll do a few drawing exercises. For all of our exercises, you’ll need a piece of paper and a pencil.

For our first drawing exercise, simply draw a hammer – just a plain old hammer from your imagination. Don’t look at anything to create this first drawing.

Your hammer might end up looking like this…

Now, this drawing does look like a hammer – right? But, it could be better – much better. So drawing purely from our imagination is not enough.

See also: Improve Your Drawing Skills in 6 Days

Drawing with 100% Observation

Now we’re going to create another drawing, but this time we’re going to have a few restrictions. This time we’ll actually look at a hammer. I’ll use a photo reference and we’ll look at it, but you can not look at your drawing paper.

Yes, you read that right. You can not look at your drawing paper. We’ll only be looking at the reference photo and not the drawing.

Here’s a look at the photo reference…

We’ll create this drawing using just one line. This means that once we place the pencil to the drawing surface, we can’t pick it up again. The goal here is to pick a place to start observing on the hammer and try to move your hand with your pencil at the same speed and angle in which your eyes move over the reference. This is called a blind contour line drawing.

Don’t worry about what your drawing will look like. Just concentrate on observing and moving your hand with the pencil.

This is what my drawing looks like (along with the first to compare)…

We now have two drawings, one from our imagination without any observation, and one that was created purely with 100% observation. Drawing accurately is somewhere in between these two drawings.

Now here’s the big secret… Drawing is at least 50% observation.

Drawing is about seeing and recording what we see in the form of marks.

Drawing with 50% Observation and 50% Mark-Making

Let’s create one final drawing and we’ll use the same reference photo, but this time we can look at the reference photo and we can look at our drawing paper. We can also pick up our pencil this time too.

Now we’re making comparisons between what we see in the reference and the marks that we’re making on the drawing paper. In fact, it’s a continuous process of going back and forth with our eyes between the photo reference and the drawing paper. All the answers are sitting there waiting for us in the photo reference. All we have to do is see them and place them in the correct location on the drawing paper.

Here’s a look at my drawing of a hammer using 50% observation and 50% mark-making…

This is the essence of drawing. It is all about observation – well, at least 50%.

#1 Secret to Drawing – Conclusion

The number one secret to drawing is that drawing is at least 50% observation. It’s about what happens between your ears a bit more than just making marks on the surface. When you’re practicing your drawing, you should also be practicing your observation skills because ultimately, drawing is about observation.

Step by Step Approach to Drawing Anything

In this drawing lesson, I’m going to share with you a simple three step approach to drawing and sketching that improves your accuracy and probably will improve your speed as well.

When most of us first start drawing, we usually start with drawing the outlines, and these are often referred to as contour lines. The problem with this approach is that it is a little bit harder to be accurate with your drawing. You might find a place to start on your drawing, and then when you come back and connect the contour line, sometimes it doesn’t always match up or you have distortion. In this way of drawing we’re starting with the outside part of the subject and working our way to the inside. So we’re working from the outside to the inside. But what if we switched that, reversed it, and instead worked from the inside out?

In this three step process, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’ll take a look at two different subjects – one that’s simple and another one that’s complex. We’ll see how this three-step process can be applied. Let’s take a quick look at this three-step process before we go into the examples.

The Simple Process of Drawing

The first step is to break our subject down into simplified shapes. Now this works for simple subjects and also complex subjects, and we’ll see this in just a minute.

See also: Drawing 101 – Simplify for Success

After we’ve broken down our subject into basic shapes, the second step is to draw the contour lines or the outlines. These are the lines that we normally begin with when we create a drawing, but in this case we’re going to start with the simplified shapes then move on to the contour lines.

The third step in the process is to develop the value. Value is the darkness or lightness of a color. It’s one of the seven elements of art, and it’s perhaps one of the most important elements of art. When we develop the value a lot of times people refer to this as shading. We are creating the illusion of form, we’re creating the illusion of a light source, and we’re making our object or subject appear more three-dimensional. So let’s take a look at our first example.

See also: 6 Reasons to Draw on Toned Paper

Example 1 – Drawing a Dolphin

For our first subject, we’ll draw this wonderful dolphin.

Step 1 – Draw the Basic Shapes

Our first step of the process is to break the subject down into basic shapes. We don’t have to worry about drawing a series of controlled shapes. We just want a generalized idea of the shape. I’m drawing loosely and quickly before moving on to the next shape that I see.

It’s important to note that you may see different shapes in this subject or any other subject that you decide to draw, and that’s completely fine. You just want to find shapes that are simple and easy for you to draw. And for some subjects, it’s going to be very easy to see these shapes. But for others, it might take a few minutes of thinking.

Step 2 – Draw the Contours

Now with a bit more pressure and a lot more refinement, we’ll go ahead and draw the contour lines or the outlines. But since we have a faint version of our dolphin in place, we can draw these contour lines with a bit more conviction, meaning we can be a bit more confident with the marks that we make here and we can concentrate on the quality of the line that we make.

Step 3 – Shade the Drawing

Now it’s time to develop the value. Value, of course, is the darkness or lightness of a color and a lot of times we refer to this as shading. In this case, we’re just adding darker values and we’re leaving lighter areas using the white of the paper to create the tints. And of course, we’re adding graphite in areas to create the shades. Our goal is to create a full range of value. This leads to the illusion of form and texture in our drawing. This is the step that is the most time-consuming part of the process.

Example 2 – Drawing a Drill

Now we’ve seen how we can apply this simple three-step process to a simple subject. Let’s take a look at applying this process to a more complex subject. This time we’ll draw this very complex drill.

Step 1 – Draw the Basic Shapes

At first glance, this drill might seem overwhelming and overly complex, but we can break this down into simplified shapes. We’ll draw the simplified shapes first, and then worry about the contour lines.

Just like with our first example, I mentioned that you may see different shapes, and that’s completely okay. We’re all going to see things differently. What’s most important is that you just find shapes that you feel are easy for you to draw.

Step 2 – Draw the Contours

Now we can start with the contour lines. This is a complex subject as we’ve already mentioned, but now we have a better idea of where these contour lines need to go. Drawing these contour lines is much easier now that we have a map in place – the map we created with basic shapes. My goal is to be as accurate as possible with these contour lines, but as is the case with any drawing or painting, I’m allowing myself to be a little bit more free with my drawing. If my drawing’s a little bit different from the subject, that’s completely okay with me.

Step 3 – Shade the Drawing

After our contour lines are in place, it’s time to develop the value. Again, this is the most time intensive part of the process. It’s a slow process, but it’s also not that difficult. All we have to do is match the values that we see or match them to the best of our ability in order to create the illusion of form and light on our subject.

3 Step Approach to Drawing Anything – Conclusion

This three step approach is great for creating quick drawings and sketches. It ensures accuracy like we have seen, and it will also improve your speed as well. Now that you know and understand this approach, we’ll find use for it in your own drawings and paintings.

Nature has so many curiosities, and cones are one of them. We see various cones on a walk in a forest or park and in holiday wreaths and floral decorations. In this pen and ink drawing lesson, we take a look at drawing several pine cones with ink.

In other words, pine cones become a habitual part of our life. Chances are that we don’t even pay much attention to these small jewels of nature. But does it mean that cones are just something simple or ordinary?

In the recent past, we worked on an interesting project called “Ink Herbarium”. Today we’ll explore a similar idea, but at a different angle. The subject of our inked collection will be pine cones of different sizes and shapes.

Cones are a wonderful candidate for a project. Why? They can be found even in winter, when all the beautiful leaves, flowers and other numerous wonders of the natural world are temporarily not available.

I consider this drawing as a set of sketches that we create to study nature. That’s why I’m going to use cones from my collection. Some of the exemplars were brought from another country!

I recommend that you gather some physical pine cones before starting the project. We’ll talk about the reasons for that in the next chapter.

To introduce some challenge to this project, I’ll be using one ink liner (number 0.2) to draw the whole artwork. This tool doesn’t allow much variation of the line width, in contrast to nib pens.

However, we can achieve a slight variation by changing the level of pressure on the liner. The lighter the pressure is and the faster we draw, the thinner our lines will be.

Also, using a tool that creates lines of medium width by default will add a sketchier, more spontaneous feel to the artwork.

So, please use any kind of inking tool you have or prefer. Maybe you’ll even choose graphite or colored pencils for this idea!

How to Understand the Structure of a Cone

A Wonderful Responsiveness to Humidity

It’s useful to know that scales of seed-bearing cones move in response to changes in relative humidity. The scales gape open when it is dry. But when it’s damp, they close up.

To a certain extent, you can use this mechanism to adjust the appearance of your cones so they fit your vision. One of the methods to ‘close’ a cone is to put it into a container that is filled with water.

Two Basic Shapes of Cones

We usually use the term “pine cone” to describe any cone we come across, but that’s not technically correct. Evergreens come in many types: for example, fir, pine, hemlock, cedar or spruce. They are called conifers and bear cones.

Basically, cones are found in two common shapes – we’ll talk about them in a moment. It’s necessary to mention, this classification is just something that I invented to simplify the explanations and the further process of drawing.

Of course, the world of cones is much more complex than just two categories of shapes.

For example, each evergreen has two distinct cone types – female and male. They usually differ in size and appearance, too! If you are interested in this topic, please take your time to explore it. Additional knowledge will only enhance your project, making it more credible.

The first type of shape is an egg-like cone (like fir tree cones). It looks rather solid and massive. The top tips of scales can move away from the general shape of the core, creating an uneven silhouette, but the main egg-like mass is still visually dominating. Such cones usually have a predictable, symmetrically organized rhythm of scales.

Another type is more complex – it features extended scales arranged around a core. In this case, scales go aside from the core quite noticeably. Scales have a rhythm too, but it isn’t as strict and obvious as with the first model. Pine tree cones are an example of this second type.

Chances are that you’ll come across a cone that has features of both types, too. Nature is versatile!

In the image below, you’ll find a scheme that represents the first step that you can undertake to analyze and draw a cone of any of those types. However, your drawing doesn’t have to resemble any scheme – please feel free to develop your own approach. 

Analyzing Your Cone

The best way to analyze a cone is to get a real one and observe it at different angles.

How does it look in from a side view or from above? Can you see the rows of scales on top of each other? As a general principle, look for the guidelines (like separate scales that attract your attention more than others) and rhythm in the pattern. This will help to develop your observational skills.

Also, it’s useful to study the separate scales – especially those bending aside of the “stem” quite noticeably. How do they look if we change the angle of view? Is there anything special about the shape of their tip?

Compare the scales at the center of the cone and at its periphery. How do the location and the shape of the cone itself affect the appearance of the individual scales?

Pay attention to the density and height of the scales’ rows. How do they change from top to the bottom? If we observe a cone from above, we’ll see how the scales fill in the shape of the cone. It’s possible to draw a scheme with imaginary lines that mark each row of scales.

Just keep in mind that cones may be slightly – or significantly – asymmetrical. Especially the cones of the “pine type”. Sometimes an exaggerated inclination or distortion of the cone’s core adds natural charm and expressiveness to the artwork.

A cone may seem to be a simple object, but when it comes to drawing, its complexity uncovers itself. Take the time you need. It will pay off.

Qualitative photos used as a reference can be helpful. But, they may lack important nuances that allow us to understand the structure and volume of the object. By the way, any step-by-step instructions on how to draw a generic cone may lead to a similar point of confusion – the goal is to study, not to repeat a scheme that somebody has made.

That’s why having real nature at hand is quite useful, if not crucial. You can deviate from that object’s shape which is completely normal.

Working on the Composition

I’m going to draw several kinds of cones of different shapes and sizes, emphasizing the priority of cones with additional elements – like fir twigs and small cone seeds. A combination of smaller and larger elements will make the composition more balanced.

I plan to gather my sketches inside one sheet of paper, so this collection will look like an art poster. That’s why a harmonious composition is absolutely desired here.

See also: Composition in Art

I create several miniature sketches, playing with various possibilities.

The depicted elements may be stylized. The only thing that is important is your understanding of what is going on the final surface. For example, the meaning behind that relatively large shape on the left side of my sketches may seem dubious, but I know – it is a symbol for a big fir cone. 

Creating the Graphite Pencil Underdrawing

In my experience, having a preparatory drawing that serves as a structure for ink lines is invaluably helpful. It allows being more confident and, at the same time, relaxed while inking.

So I sketch our objects, adding as many details as I feel necessary to start applying ink. It’s important to reflect your observations in the underdrawing and be deliberate.

For example, I don’t just repeat the pattern of scales on the biggest cone. The top scales are smaller, featuring a minor change in the rhythm.

Also, a couple of cones in my drawing may seem very similar – the only difference is their size. In reality, the discrepancy between their shapes and their tips suggest that these cones belong to different trees. However, we already know that conifers are relatives. 

Drawing the Cones with Ink

I outline the main contours of the cones and their scales, paying particular attention to the silhouette of each object.

As I work with only one ink liner, it’s necessary to vary the pressure on the tool. When I draw with a lighter pressure and at a higher speed, the lines become just a bit thinner. That’s exactly what we need!

The cones of an alder tree are the smallest in our drawing. They present so many compact scale-like shapes! I avoid making their contours too complex as this may overload the drawing right away. 

To allocate the shadows, we need to determine where the light source is. In the case with relatively small objects, a common model is an illuminance from above. As we have several sketches gathered together, the model of light and shadow should be the same or similar for all your sketches.

With groups of hatches, I accent the darker areas of the cones, focusing on the individual scales. Keep in mind the general shape of the cone. The bottom rows of scales usually present darker values, owing to the cone’s core shadow or numerous drop shadows from the upper elements.

See also: How to Shade a Drawing

Also, practice shows that darkening the area near the pine cone’s core helps to move forward the tips of the front scales visually.

Hatching can be a powerful tool – if the characteristics and direction of lines conform to the shape of the object, you’ll easily create an illusion of volume. That’s why I use contour hatching to make the cones more three-dimensional.

To learn more about the common hatching techniques used in ink drawings, check out this course: The Pen and Ink Experience

Also, the direction of hatches accents various planes (sides) of an object – for example, the upper plane of the pine cone scale, its width, and the side plane. Sometimes it’s helpful to see everything you draw in a simplified manner.

The alder tree cones require a different approach. To darken the gaps between the rows of scales, I use a spontaneous scribble line.

Feel free to erase the graphite lines as you go. At the time, I prefer to keep them – grey marks create interesting tonal nuances here. 

I increase the contrast in my drawing. The fir cone, which has a solid, massive shape, needs a more pronounced core shadow, so I apply a couple of hatching layers to the sides and the bottom part. The pressure on the liner is minimal because the lines should be as thin and unobtrusive as possible.

Also, I darken the areas between the scales to separate the rows visually.

I pay special attention to the contours – they should blend into the sides of the cones smoothly.

There is an advantage in working on several sketches at once. For example, such an approach increases the chances to notice new nuances as you go, because you see your drawing with fresh eyes each time. Also, you can digress from one object and have a beneficial moment of rest while working on another part of the artwork. 

I add dots here and there, especially to the tips of the scales, to reveal a beautiful organic texture. Also, dots help me to soften the transition between darker and lighter values on the scales. Some areas seem too light, even highlighted, so I mute them with the deliberate use of dots.

As a final touch, I make sure that the fir tree needles, which are relatively dark in real life, have enough ink marks. The individual needles remain lighter than their neighbors. They stand out because of the contrast. 

Drawing Pine Cones with Pen and Ink – Conclusion

Congratulations – we’ve completed this special project! I hope that you found cones truly fascinating and made another step in developing your artistic skills. The great news is that now you can apply this knowledge to the new projects.

Thanks for being with me on this journey. I wish you much inspiration and luck!