Sugar Skull Painting

Hello! I am SO excited to share this project with you. I have been wanting to share it for a while, just haven’t had the time. Back in December (I told you it was a while!), my son’s former teacher commissioned me to do a painting of a sugar skull for her daughter. I had given said teach a card with a Bombshell Stamps sugar skull on it, and her daughter absconded with it and proceeded to hang it in her dorm room. So, she thought a painting would be a great gift for her. I was overjoyed. I had not painted anything in so long, and I missed it so much. Here’s the completed painting, then I will show you the steps I took to get there.

What do you think? It was requested that I use teal and orange, as those are the color’s of the girl’s dorm room. I painted on canvas board, and the size is 8 1/2 x 11. I used acrylics.

I did some research on sugar skulls, looking to see what types of designs I liked best. How many flowers? Do I want a spider web? And it goes on. When I finally made some decisions, I drew the images on with pencil.

I painted the background first, as I wasn’t entirely sold on what I had drawn on to the skull. Plus,  wanted to be sure that I got that orange – teal combination that I needed. I loved blending the background colors.

Then I worked with the parts of the skull that I knew I was keeping. I liked the web, I was happy with the eyes. But the nose area looked off to me.

I painted the flower on the chin, as I was happy about that part. But those swirls around the nose….. I must have changed them 4 times until I was happy. You can see that they are different in this picture.

And here’s what I ended up with. Much better than what I had started with. I was really happy with the end result.

I painted the whole thing in about 5 hours. I loved it. It was so therapeutic  I think I may need to make some more of these….what do you think? Thank you so much for stopping by today. Have an inspiring day!