How to Draw Skulls

If you're looking for a step by step guide of how to draw skulls, you definitely hit the jackpot by coming to this page.

Here I will teach you how to draw skulls in 6 short, easy steps.

Instructions

1. 

   Start off by drawing a shape that looks like the outline of a bell if you were to look down at it from a 3/4 isometric view. This will be the jaw. Now, draw the shape of a face mask above it, but so that the bottom of the face mask shape overlaps the top part of the bell shape.

   To get an idea of what I mean, you can click the picture to the left of each step to enlarge it.

2. 

   Draw a small rectangle shape, with round edged, so the bottom half of the rectangle overlaps the bottom of the face mask shape mentioned in Step 1.

   Connect the edges of the bell shape with two small "gum drop" shapes that are each resting on their side, tilting away from the skull. Notice in the picture to the left how and where the lines overlap. Try to mimic this as much as possible.

3. 

   Erase the lines in the middle of the skull! No more nasty overlapping. The only line that should remain in the middle of the skull is the bottom and the left and right side of the rectangle shape drawn in Step 2 and the top of the bell drawn in Step 1.

   By the time you finish this step, you should have something resembling the picture to the left.

4. 

   Define the jaw. Use the rectangle created earlier as the top of the skull's mouth. Draw a bottom of the mouth as well. To do this, start a line going downward at the top corner of the rectangle and have it stop just a little bit away from the bottom of the jaw. Connect these two lines together in a smooth, curved and natural way and you have the outline of the mouth.

   Now, do a bit of facial surgery with your eraser on the chin of the skull. Round things out nicer as in the picture to the left.

5. 

   Add the eyes and nose. I know, for some people this may be trickier than it sounds, but really do your best to get the shape of the eyes right. The eyes of a skull are not perfectly round. Take a loot at the eyes on the skull to the left to get an idea of the shape you'll want your eyes to be. If you have a hard time seeing it, just click on it to enlarge it. Be sure to add the lines of the brown bone around the skulls as well.

   For the nose, draw an upside down heart and then use your eraser to break a line down the middle of it. Split it into two halves by defining lines on the edge of each half and fill them in.

6. 

   Add teeth and shadow definition. No one has a hard time drawing teeth -- especially on a skull where it would make sense if there were broken, rotted and completely nonidentical to each other. Draw about six teeth on both the top and bottom, having them get larger towards the center of the mouth and smaller at the borders.

   To add shadow detail, lightly brush the outline of the skull with your pencil tip, shading it inwards, gently easing up on the pencil as your tip gets further away from the thick lines out of the outline. Do this around the edges to realistically mimic the way the light would reflect off the skull.

Tips & Warnings

• There are a ton of other great sites around to teach you how to draw various things. Feel free to do a google search for them any old time!