I thought, ‘Why do I suck at getting the likeness of people when I’m surrounded by them? What if I paint a skull without reference?’ Everyone has a skull, so I thought that if I cannot do one, then it may partially explain my problem.

I gave myself 20 minutes to paint on a little 4×5” sheet, and this is the result:

This isn’t human. At least it appears to be a hominid skull.

It reflects how I draw. Everything I can’t draw appears chubbier than they are. Even a skull. (One can infer how much exercise I get by inspecting this and my sketchbook.) I winged it  once I was down at the mandible and the negative space. Needs more jaw. The brain case is too small. And the nose hole appears pushed in.

Below is what I came up with when I had the same amount of time to do a skull while looking at a photo.

There’s still something unsettling about it.