Sunday, August 12, 2012

Sunday Simulacra - Version 6.11

Welcome back, skull hunters! It's another "hardcore" version of our Sunday simulacra with some jagged boneheads.

Danny Roberts, AKA "Stickman", spied this loud mouthed cement and rebar skull in Gilbert, AZ.


And Shannon, AKA "Rockgurl", received this stone faced rock skull from her husband to put in her rock garden.


An excellent find and an excellent gift. The sharing of skulls will never cease as long as we have our wonderful hunters and artists keeping Skull-A-Day alive. Thanks to Stickman and Rockgurl for adding to our collection!

Saturday, August 11, 2012

All Is Vanity – Exhibition Photos

For those of you who couldn't make it to see All Is Vanity, my recent exhibition of 60+ pieces from my 100 Painted Skulls project at the Clippi Headren hair salon here in Richmond, VA, below are a few pictures of the installation...






And yes, I really did put 2 pieces in the bathroom...



More pix from the exhibition can be seen HERE.
And detailed images of the pieces can be seen HERE.

Skull-A-Day by Email

Folks who want to keep up with the latest posts here on Skull-A-Day now have another option: you can now subscribe to this blog via email! Look for the sign-up widget on the right.

FYI we won't receive your email directly, it's just used by Blogger to send out notifications and nothing else!

And of course you can still sign-up for our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, of Google+ as well!

Minimalist Eco-skulls

Brazilian based artist, James Kudo, submitted these acrylic on canvas paintings that, "I have  developed over the skull icon. A paradigm of the devastation and the individual within the planet and the way he deals with the ecology."





It's always interesting to see how minimal the skull details can be yet still we recognize the skull icon and it's significance.  James raises a good point with these also.  Humans may feel more "Earth friendly" than ever, but there are far less of us working on giving back to the Earth while the population still slowly consumes the planet.  Think about your Mother Earth and take some time to do something nice for her.  We must give back to complete the cycle.  Thanks, James!

Friday, August 10, 2012

Watch Part Skulls

Dan, from Toronto, Ontario, Canada typically makes motorcycles, but he shared with us some skulls that he made recently using recycled vintage watch parts.






Tinker C says:

Recently I read an article about Clocky being part of an exhibit at the MOMA so my first thoughts after seeing your designs were about that wonderful prop.  It however, made me start thinking about what the skulls of great personified items in our world would look like if we could see inside them.  Your designs are probably a good indication of the answer.  Thank you for sharing your with us.

[CONTEST] Win a Cardboard Safari Vince Skull

Thank you for participating. This contest is now closed.

We're happy to offer our readers the opportunity to win a skull from Cardboard Safari. "Cardboard Safari designs, manufactures and distributes home decor products worldwide using sustainable materials and state of the art manufacturing technologies. The tall tales and misadventures of my (owner Chris Jessee) woodsman cousin inspired the design of the first Cardboard Safari product, Bucky the deer trophy. Other trophy heads quickly followed as friends and customers made requests for their favorite animals. Our fun products inspire the soul and imagination of our customers at an affordable price." The folks at Cardboard Safari, are excited to participate in this Skull-A-Day giveaway by offering a Special Edition, "Vince", full-size human skull, to one lucky Skull-A-Day reader!





"Vince" is made of over 50 laser cut layers of recycled cardboard, a non-toxic, environmentally friendly product. Laser cutting makes for a precision fit and easy assembly using layered construction. Packaged flat for shipping; includes detailed instructions. There is one skull per package. This Special Edition includes a highly detail contour box. You read that right...there is assembly required and detailed instructions, because "Vince", is a fantastic 3D puzzle. This 3D skull puzzle is a great skull for teenagers to adults. Since cardboard is flammable, please keep the skull away from open flames and hot lights. Also, cardboard edges are sharp, since they are paper, so handle with care. "Vince" Measures: 6W x 6H x 8D inches

Puzzles are a great way to keep you busy on a leisurely day, and this unique one is sure to entertain you for hours. I normally put puzzles together at a house, but "Vince" deserves an adventure! To enter the contest, leave a comment below answering, where is the craziest place you would put your "Vince" skull together? I might put him together deep in the Paris, France catacombs. I think he would feel at home there.

[NOTE: If you are reading this on Facebook or Google+, be sure to leave your comment on this Skull-A-Day.com blog post if you want to be actually entered in this contest.]

Don't forget to include a way to contact you (either an e-mail in the post OR make sure your Blogger profile has a working e-mail link for you on it). Entries are only valid with this information.

You have until just Midnight Eastern Time Thursday, August 16th to enter so don't delay!

NOTE: Cardboard Safari will pay for USA shipping to the winner. Sorry international folks!

Of course you don't need to wait till the end of the contest to get your own Cardboard Safari creation. Visit their site to purchase one or more of their "Vince" Skulls available in two colors, or any of their wonderful recycled cardboard designs!

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Dia de la Abby: #79 Tea and Coco Skull

Rummaging through my kitchen for more things to paint with, I chose three types of tea, and hot chocolate, for this skull.


This was a fun experiment. I knew that the black tea (Lipton) would be light brown, and the hot chocolate would be dark brown. The raspberry tea is grey, though it's red-pink in the mug. The chamomile tea is a very pale brown, which was a nice surprise since it was more leaves than color in the mug. I sketched out the skull with pencil, then painted with the tea, like I would with water colors. This painting smelled great immediately, even when dry. The tea smell faded a day later, but the chocolate scent stayed.

You might wonder how I made paint from these items. It's rather simple. I took four mugs, and opened one bag into each mug, so the items were separated. Separately, I heated up some water in a liquids measuring cup, in the microwave. Once the water was warm enough, I poured a little into each mug, and poured the rest in the sink. I only needed enough water to make a concentrated infused liquid. If I had prepared the mugs, as I would to drink the liquids, then the "paint" would be too watered down and sheer. You will obviously have loose tea leaves, but I wanted this, as it adds extra concentrated color to the paper, when I painted with it. This is technique very similar to how I painted my #52 Skull Sculpture, but for that I used layers of just black tea to age it. The most easily seen variations are the bits of undissolved hot chocolate.


On Thursdays in the 6.0 year, I will post my own Dia de la Abby creations. On Thursdays in the 4.0 and 5.0 years, I posted my Dia de la Abby creations and occasionally tutorials with instructions on how I made my pieces. Hopefully you feel inspired by my posts just as I was by Noah's Skull-A-Day 1.0 daily project. Want to find me elsewhere, follow me on Facebookmy BlogGoogle+ and/or Twitter.

Paper Skull Latern

Max Rubenacker, from Colorado, created "A little paper craft lantern...to print out and attach to Christmas lights for my Dia de los Muertos celebrations." The design is "inspired by Manny Calavera of Grim Fandango."


It's that time of year where I have Halloween and Dia de los Muertos on my mind every day. I love simple paper craft projects like these. This one was designed to fit over Christmas lights, so they are transformed into skull lights for a Dia de los Muertos celebration. These would be a great project for a group. I can easily see these paint or drawn on, to make them more festive, by people of all ages. Dia de los Muertos is of course about celebration of your heritage and family, so what better way to celebrate than doing a family activity. Noah's Papercraft Skull could also be used as Christmas light covers, with or without the articulated jaw. Feel free to print out both of the paper skulls and use them to decorate your abode. Halloween and Dia de los Muertos only come 3 days a year, but for a skull filled house like mine, having these up year round wouldn't be out of place.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Flash Card Skull

Holden McCormick sent us this skull "made by a 12 year old" using flashcards.



Old School C:

You know when technology runs too much of your life when the term “flashcards” brings up an image of a piece of some sort of technology.  It has been ages since I had the pleasure of working with these old pieces of technology, it however is nice to see that our younger generation is still familiar with them.  Then again all those cards are blank, maybe this is a commentary that these have gone the way of magnetic tape or film strips, and this is the fate of another tool of the ghosts of learning past.  Thank you for sharing this creation with us.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Lego Goat Skull

This awesome piece of construction is courtesy of "The Scale Works" in Amsterdam. An agreeable note was included, "Lego is a great way to experiment with three dimensional form without getting your hands dirty or having to throw away mistakes. It's the ultimate in recyclable material."


Aaah, legos. We've seen your glory before. How many a young person has benefited from your sturdiness and versatility? Like all classic art mediums, the countless designs are only limited by the imagination. Maybe if we all share this with others then lego art might become the next great stye and we'll see it in museums someday. I'm gonna share this with two lego lovin' guys I know named Matt and Ray for starters. What will you do......?

Monday, August 6, 2012

[BONUS] 402. Casette Skull II

My friend recently gave me a bag of old audio cassettes and I was inspired to work with that format as an art medium again for the first time since the third day of my original project....



Acrylic paint on Prince's soundtrack to Purple Rain.

Wood Skull Ring

The very creative Herbert Hoover, from  New York, NY, is back again with a Wood Skull Ring from his Ring-A-Day project.


I'm enjoying Herbert's Ring-A-Day project. He's playing with designs and materials to make quirky and creative rings daily. This is a great one using wood and sharp angles to create a stylized skull ring. To see Herbert's daily creations, visit his Blog and Facebook page.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Sunday Simulacra - Version 6.10

Who knew that our band of skull hunters had it's own aerial unit keeping their eyes on the skies for the skulls reigning from above.

This fantastic cloud skull was captured on the deck of John Angelo's cabin in beautiful Pollock Pines, California.


And one of our most avid hunters, Tom Adams, spotted this "skullset" with his entire family.


The best part of these two isn't their similarities but their differences.  One is formed from the clouds themselves, the other is a void of negative space within the clouds.  Each has it's own persona so each earns a place in our elaborate trophy room.  Thanks, John & Tom!

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Symbolic(?) Skull

Scott Middlehurst is responsible for this superbly detailed sharpie with acrylics skull. 


It may be coincidence, but I see a lot of symbolism in this piece. Of course we see the skull and snake, but the exquisite details are what make the difference.  Like a rich tapestry containing clues to secrets that we don't even know exist.  Take a look for yourself. Thanks for sharing, Scott!

Friday, August 3, 2012

Designed Skull

Designer Jan D. Gillich from Berlin, Germany sent us this illustrated skull.



Archetype C says:

 When I saw this piece I couldn't help but see it as perhaps a future design for one of the universal danger symbols- like radiation or bio hazard.  My imagination ran away with me and I began imagining a post apocalyptic world in which this symbol permeates the surrounding showing up on almost everything and small bands of survivors try to rebuild a new civilization while trying to avoid the deadly remnants of the apocalypse. Thank you for submitting your work for us to share.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Sketchy Skull

Nick Newton from Calgary, Canada drew this skull.


There is something about this toothy smile that exudes happiness. The sketched style reminds me of old cartoons, in particular "The Skeleton Dance" by Walt Disney. It looks like it should belong to one of the skeletons joyfully playing in the cemetery.

Dia de la Abby #78: Stacked Skulls

Inspired by the connecting Olympic rings, and pop art, I created this painting to play with angles and colors.



If you quickly look up the Olympic rings, you will notice the colors and stacking I chose doesn't exactly match up. Instead of a black skull for the black ring, I chose orange. I flipped the position of the rings, because stacking skulls that way, didn't make logical sense to me. I sketched out the skulls with pencil on watercolor paper, with the aid of my handy skull model. I used five colors of acrylic paint for the skulls, with black and grey for the surrounding area of the skulls. I used only black to darken, and white to lighten the colors. The pink turned purple, yellow turned green, and orange turned brown when darkened. I think my black must be blue based for this to happen. The rest turned out normal...green turned darker green, and blue turned darker blue. This took about 6 hours to complete, with breaks for my back, since leaning over painting for several hours hurts my back. The lighting source went from natural to lightbulb, as the hours passed. This was a fun one to do, as it caused me to experiment with shading and highlights, as well as angles of the same object. I'll play with this some more in future paintings.


On Thursdays in the 6.0 year, I will post my own Dia de la Abby creations. On Thursdays in the 4.0 and 5.0 years, I posted my Dia de la Abby creations and occasionally tutorials with instructions on how I made my pieces. Hopefully you feel inspired by my posts just as I was by Noah's Skull-A-Day 1.0 daily project. Want to find me elsewhere, follow me on Facebookmy BlogGoogle+ and/or Twitter.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Jeweled Skulls

Artist Joanne Davidson from Aberdeenshire, Scotland told us: “I wanted to learn how to cast with resin and after a few practices with resin and marble powder I realised how much like bone it came
out, no surprises that a skull would be the next thing I created.  I then sculptured a skull from terracotta clay and took a silicone cast of it.”



Joanne continued: “I love pointillism and monotony so casting plain skulls soon became mundane, I needed something a bit more challenging and like other artists out there I wanted to try the Damien Hirst Jeweled Skull. Using 5000 4mm rhinestones and 20 hours later I finally completed the skull.”
 

She went on: “Having now made quite few plain Jeweled ones I thought I'd try them with colours. The results were great, so I moved to do a little more complicated one. The leopard print one took a bit longer to do than the plain ones, but I loved doing it.”



 Bejeweled C says:

Thank you for sharing your truly inspiring work.  Having personally worked with these items in the past on a limited basis on this, I know the frustration and tediousness of how you need to interact with the material.  Creating with them on such a scale is a testament to your artistic talents.

[CONTEST REMINDER] Last Day to Win A Set of Spooky Scholasitc Books!

The contest is over, thanks to everyone who participated! Don't forget, today at Midnight (Eastern Time) is the last day to enter to win a wonderful set of spooky books from Scholastic (shown below)!


Follow THIS LINK (or click the bright red ad to the right) for details.


And of course you don't need to wait till the end of the contest to get your own Scholastic books check out their website for hundreds (thousands?) of titles and of course visit your local independent bookstores and libraries and ask for them there!


Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Queen Anne's Skull

Making skull art can be a family affair, and it turns out that Skull-A-Day friend and Mütter Museum curator, Anna Dhody, comes from a from a line of skull lovers. Her mother, Joanne Dhody, found a way to "tat" Queen Anne's lace into a skull for us to share.


The delicate petals seem to be an exact opposite of the hardened bony structure that we usually associate with the skull. Perhaps Joanne is helping us to remember how delicate our craniums can be. Life's breezes can be disruptive to our composure. Take this day to arrange yourself and find peace in your skull. Thanks, Joanne!

Monday, July 30, 2012

Day 181 Skull

Cassy Stranahan, has been working on a 365 (366) day project and often works from Noah's book 365 A Daily Creativity Journal. June 29th (Day 181) was skull day and here is what she did.She  arranged text in a graphics program and then put it through a Photoshop filter or two.


Doing a daily project is of course how Skull-A-Day was born. I love seeing other people's daily projects and the occasional skulls that come from it. This creation plays with letters and filters to create the skeletal shape. Playing with how you view a common item, will change your perspective on how you view the world around you. Art is a great way to unlock your imagination.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Sunday Simulacra - Version 6.9

Today's skulls are formed in rocks.

William Bearss, "found this tennis ball sized rock on Makinac Island, MI. at a site called Skull Cave."



Carl Hamm said "Here are two photos with skull shapes that I noticed in the sandy cliffs over the beach at San Diego's Torrey Pines Natural Reserve this past weekend  (June 23) while I was being given a tour of some cool beach spots in San Diego by a friend who just moved out there. They are incredibly beautiful cliffs, and apparently they change gradually over time so I'm sure many people have seen skull shapes (and everything else you can imagine) in these cliffs over the years. When I got up close to the sedimentary rock, I noticed how soft it is. Too often, places like this are damaged by careless people. Luckily, these cliffs at Torrey Pines Natural Reserve are protected and I hope they stay that way."



Keep sending those pictures in, we always love seeing what our skull hunters find. Anyone is welcomed to participate, it's fun and it's easy- if you see a simulacra skull, photograph it and send those pictures in to our submissions address with a little something about what it is really and maybe a little about you.

[CONTEST REMINDER] Win A Set of Spooky Books from Scholastic!

The contest is over, thanks to everyone who participated! Just a reminder that you have until only Wednesday night at Midnight (Eastern Time) to enter to win a wonderful set of spooky books from Scholastic (shown below)!


Follow THIS LINK (or click the bright red ad to the right) for details.


And of course you don't need to wait till the end of the contest to get your own Scholastic books check out their website for hundreds (thousands?) of titles and of course visit your local independent bookstores and libraries and ask for them there!


Saturday, July 28, 2012

Appreciative Pyrography Skull

If these skulls look familiar then you might remember the work of Laura Bartholomew being featured on our blog before. This time she's back with a few more, one in particular being a work of appreciation for her good friend, Tim.




Wood burning art is still some of my favorite stuff. There's something so permanent and unforgiving about the technique that it closely resembles "tattooing" wood. The portrait is a great gift that is totally personal as well as awesome. I'm sure we'll have a few readers wondering if you take requests. Thanks again for sharing your stuff, Laura!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Wooden Skull Army

Artist Bruce Tuckey based in Newcastle, UK told us: “I had turned and carved a total of 55 skulls from sycamore and ash wood. The skull army were then assembled to form a sculpture based on Tibetan prayer beads, and are displayed in Elemore woods, Easington, Durham, UK.”
 


Major C says:

I guess when you can't hire enough skulls to make an army its best that you create enough to cover your shortfall.  I found your final sculpture to be quite interesting in the way that you have displayed it.  It invokes an image of a serpent almost as if you are warning the view with the skull image to lookout for it.  I also find interesting the juxtaposition of deadwood carved into skulls intertwining itself with the live wood of the tree you have positioned it in.  Thank you for sharing this amazing work with us.

[BONUS] 401. Skeletube Army

In honor of the 15th anniversary of the Art-o-mat project I created this army of painted vacuum tubes!



Since I needed to make a lot of them to swap with other artists at this weekend's Art-o-mat event in DC, I decided I needed to come up with a simpler idea than the complex painted tubes I'd done previously.

In this case I designed a simple skeleton which I painted in acrylic on the smallest tubes I had, ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 inches (approx 3.8 to 6.4 cm). Thanks to Joe The Tube Amp Guy who provided me with some of the tubes I used for this project! If you need your tube based gear fixed, he's your guy.

5 years ago I made a group of skulls as part of my original 365 project for the 10th anniversary of the Art-o-mat!

And last year I made a special edition skull for the 10th anniversary of the project in my hometown Richmond, VA.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Dia de la Abby: #77 Spicy Skull



I recently removed a few expired spices from my spice cabinet. Instead of immediately throwing them away, I decided to make paint with them. I sketched out a skull with pencil. With the spice paint, I painted this skull, flowers, leaves, and vines. I found that the curry was yellow, but the rest of the spices I used were brown. Next time, I'll work with a better natural color palette.


On Thursdays in the 6.0 year, I will post my own Dia de la Abby creations. On Thursdays in the 4.0 and 5.0 years, I posted my Dia de la Abby creations and occasionally tutorials with instructions on how I made my pieces. Hopefully you feel inspired by my posts just as I was by Noah's Skull-A-Day 1.0 daily project. Want to find me elsewhere, follow me on Facebook, my Blog, Google+ and/or Twitter.

Painted Clay Skull

Oliver Å in is "a painter from Hungary and I made this skull from clay, and I painted on it because I hadn't got enough money to buy a canvas, recently that's the reason why I've started painting on shoes and guitars too." This skull is titled, "Route in My Head to Paris"







I love that Oliver has the need to paint on something, and uses what he has already as a "canvas". The sculpture it's self is beautiful. I love that all the sloping details of a skull were carefully sculpted to form a realistic skull. For more of Oliver's work, head over to his website.

[CONTEST] Win a Set of Skeletal Scholastic Books!

[UPDATE: The contest is over, thanks to everyone who participated! The winner will be contacted directly] My friends at Scholastic have graciously offered to give away a selection of skeletal books to one of our lucky readers!


There's a wide range of titles for readers of every age, so if you've got little ones this is the giveaway for you! Click the titles to find out more about these books:




To enter the contest, just leave a comment below saying what classic book you would want to read to a friendly skeleton.


[NOTE: If you are reading this on Facebook or Google+, be sure to leave your comment on the original Skull-A-Day.com post if you want to be actually entered in this contest.]


Don't forget to include a way to contact you (either an e-mail in the post OR make sure your Blogger profile has a working e-mail link for you on it). Entries are only valid with this information.


You have until just Midnight Eastern Time Wednesday, August 1st to enter so don't delay!


NOTE: This contest is only open to people with US addresses, our apologies to our international readers, you'll have to sit this one out, but there'll be more contests for you soon...

And of course you don't need to wait till the end of the contest to get your own Scholastic books check out their website for hundreds (thousands?) of titles and of course visit your local independent bookstores and libraries and ask for them there!