Nightly Owl Skull

Tanya Green of Fredericksburg, Virginia shared this lovely image from her yearlong daily project
The Gnome's Studio...Home of The Nightly Owl. She explains, "I am currently on my own 365 journey of nightly owls. Thanks to Noah, and finally making a commitment to creativity, I have been using the prompts from his book 365 A Daily Creativity Journal every night since October 2, 2013 to create...well...something owl-esque. Last night was Day 244: Get Framed. Instead of going literal, I decided to create the framework of an owl...the skull. The image attached was created with oil pastels on black paper."

Skulls on Paper

Chris Tures from St. Paul, MN learned about Skull-A-Day through a friend who encouraged him to share some of his recent work.

"Charcoal Skull" (Charcoal on Paper)

"Yellow Skull" (Oil Pastel on Paper)

Easy Listening C says:

What a wonderful friend you have make sure you thank them for us. I really enjoy the two pieces you have shared with us. You have transformed a traditionally dark subject matter and you have filled it so full of joy. Thank you for your submission and now that you have found us please visit often.

“Countdown To Halloween”
12 more days and counting...

Dia de la Abby: #5 - Oil Pastel Skull

When I was working on the last skull, this was an image that popped into my head for this week's piece. I wanted to make a skull that looked like it was sinking into a lily pad, surrounded by other lily pads. This idea was inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen tale of "Thumbelina". Specifically, the part where she meets the frogs. The illustrations of that part are always beautiful with lily pads and water creatures.


With this idea in mind, I had to pick a medium to use, so I chose oil pastels. Like last week, this is another medium that I haven't work with in many years. Unlike last week, this is a medium that I haven't found to be easy to work with...and this time was no different. Overall the results are still very rough, but looking at famous pieces of art using oil pastels, that seems to be the general result. Overall, I'm happy with it. The use of my skull model is very helpful to create a skull in different positions and I'll definitely be using it again for more pieces.

For this week's skull, instead of a tutorial, I have a few tips on using oil pastels.

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.