I am currently knee deep in paint for the second 'Still life Still death' piece, and it has come to my attention that I'm liking the way I'm rendering the skulls in these pieces. My style has always been only semi realistic. It's not flat, but it's not life like by any means, and this suits my vivid colour choices very well! So with the skulls in these paintings, I could either aim for an anatomically correct skull, something that would be tediously boring for me to research and execute, plus it goes against my artistic voice, or I could stick with my semi realistic and unnatural style, and render the skulls that way too.
You can probably guess which way won out!
So I'm doing these roughly painted, often purposely smudged skulls, that are highly anatomically inaccurate, but have their own symbolic meaning despite their lack of life like characteristics (ha, death pun, you're welcome!). In painting the skulls in this way, I'm robbing death of the fear and looming menace that it had represented in my life for so long. In the context of my faith, it's putting death back in the place as just a doorway between now and eternity, which is robbed of all threat due to my trust in Jesus - which is a win personally!
From a less spiritual perspective, it's removed death as a constant pall that overhung my daily doings, which as you can imagine was mildly annoying.
So, I can highly recommend painting unrealistic skulls as a way to symbolise death and rob it of a daily threat in your life.... you know... if that's ever been something you've struggled with!
Until next time friends, happy creating!