How to Define the Face of a Sugar Skulls

Video Transcript

"AMANDA CLAIRE: So, again, use things like line elements, dot elements, squiggles, zigzags, that kind of stuff. Try to follow the contours of the skull so, I mean, I always start, again, usually by outlining the eyes. It's just to kind of make them pop out because that's kinda really what a--it is a skull; it is sort of representing human head or human face so you do kind of want the eyes to pop out. So I like to do that and probably the nose too, if you want to. I just did a little circle there and then I'm going to just define kind of the mouth. I usually like to maybe define some of the teeth too. I'm going to do that here just like doing some little cross patching. But then, once you have the basic features defined, the next thing is to just really kind of get it sort of wild, and so that's where the other colors come in. So, I'm going to sort of pipe some yellow kinda eyes in the middle of these eyes here. One thing I like to do is to really--I'd like to use a lot of really fine little dots so I'm going to kinda do a bunch of like little dots like this, and that really kinda gives it a level of kind of detail that really looks neat when it's dry. It really makes them kind of very attractive, kinda pop out. Okay. So I've kind of made these dots. Maybe, I'll make a little line of dots to kind of--oops, kind of going up the center of the skull too. Okay. So, now I've got two colors going. I'd like to use three so shoot, let's just get the green in. And with the green, I'm going to really kind of get a little bit wacky. I'm going to try and maybe do some big sweeping zigzags like this. Again, this kinda of using line elements and dots elements that kinda follow the sort of contour of the skull. They're kinda traditional and they look really attractive once they dry; really kind of festive. So, here we go. That's good. And then, I'm gonna, maybe I'll do it a little--oops, little green dots to the center of the eyes, and there we go. And that one looks kind of funny looking but now we've got three. So, as you can see, on all of these, I've pretty much done the same thing, follow the contours of the skull, kind of outline the eyes and the teeth, and then used dots and lines and squiggles and zigzags, and at least three colors on each one. That's what I like to do. And so, that's the decorating with icing, and then the next step if you want to, is you can use pieces of paper or colored foil or write little names and stick them on there. So, we can try that next."