Dia de la Abby: #12 - Skull with Flowers

With Dia de los Muertos quickly approaching (72 days until), I was inspired to make a colorful skull.

I love mixing flowers with skulls. It's reminiscent of Dia de los Muertos folk art as well as a representation of life and death. It's also very funereal. Flowers are still used to adorn caskets and graves. Once a need to cover the scent of death, they now are just a decoration. For me, flowers remind me of the beauty of life which helps in trying to celebrate the life of the deceased. Dia de los Muertos is a yearly 3 day festival that celebrates the lives of the deceased. You have to remember the past to appreciate what you have in life.

I used colorful acrylic paint and a black paint pen to make this piece. Oh and my trusty anatomical skull, as well as many beautiful flower photos for reference. In all of my other skull paintings I've only used black paint pen on a white canvas (except 1, I used crayon to color it in on the white canvas), so this piece is very different. I haven't painted like this in many years, so I definitely wanted to experiment with techniques, so I would find one that achieved my desired look. To find out what I did, see the tutorial. For those of you who are curious about what plants and creatures I used, they are blue daisies, blue purple hydrangeas, a sunflower, a lotus, a red pink carnation, 2 different ferns, a male yellow tiger swallow tail and it's caterpillar. The creatures are my favorite type of butterfly. I have the female tattooed above my heart, which I've mentioned before is a reminder of the delicacy of life.

Every week in the 4.0 year, I will be post my own Dia de la Abby posts as well as a tutorial with instructions on how I made my piece. Hopefully you feel inspired by my posts just as I was by Noah's Skull-A-Day 1.0 daily project. Need more of me than just a weekly dose, follow me on Twitter.