Anatomy and Art

I’ve always had an appreciation for skulls.  From back when they were a sign of good horror movie, to today now that I study them.  The more you learn about the skull, the more elegant it’s design reveals itself to be.  Bones in general are like that I suppose, but the skull in particular is just beautiful.

Here are a few of my own images from one of the skulls I had at home for a while

more of these can be found at http://snapshotgenius.com/gallery/skull-A188

Before I moved to Chicago, one of my favorite sculpting exercises was to sculpt little skulls. This week we finally moved on to the head and neck portion of gross anatomy, and the first thing I did was pull out the skull we got from the class and and few pictures from my textbook and start sculpting again.

The skull I had in hand wasn’t in too good of shape, so I wound up trying my hand at a skull without a mandible for a change. This wound up being fun, because I wound up paying much more attention to all the little foramen and structures on the base of the skull than I normally would. There are so many little nooks and crannies.

It’s far from perfect, but a good exercise nonetheless. And who knows, one of these days I might just get good at this.