Induction week: Bird skulls

Bird skulls
For most of our induction week we studied bird skulls and explored different ways of drawing them and the materials you can use. Also, we worked on creating 3d sculptures from real life bird skulls made with tightly rolled newspaper rolls. We were told to make them as though we were drawing them but with newspaper in a 3d way; which basically meant not to make full, solid sculptures and instead, leave the lines exposed, adding tone in the style of a drawing or a neat sketch. This was a really difficult process that I found really frustrating at first because the newspaper was so fiddly and difficult to roll tightly (it took me the best part of two hours to start myself off!) Also, I found it hard trying to keep everything in place especially since I wasn't making a solid sculpture- I really hated getting everything secure and making sure it could stand up sturdily etc.. 
It got easier to define the shape of our skull sculptures because we'd done lots of drawing and studying the skulls we'd been working on. I really enjoyed using various materials to draw with (ink, wood, pen and charcoal) because it was challenging and it helped me get used to the anatomy of our skulls.
By the end of the week I had finished my sculpture and it just about managed to look remotely close to the skull but i could have improved it by making it more sturdier, defining the top of the head and maybe adding more to it so it looks more detailed and possibly more lifelike. I enjoyed most of this little project but I felt like we had too much time to do it and it got rather boring; even though by the end I'd done some really good observational drawings and studies.

This is an example of the bird skulls we were observing... although there were many other various types of skulls with different shaped beaks, eye-sockets and different sizes as well.

This is an image of the bird skull I was observing.... The key features are the long skinny beak and the large eye sockets. The beak was hard to do because: 1. It wouldn't stay straight and curves round and 2. the eye sockets had to be perfect or it would mess up the whole head structure. 

This is my sculpture before painting, completely finished... In my opinion It's a good representation of a bird skull but doesn't fully look like the original.

This is my bird skull completely finished, painted and photographed. I think it is simple but effective and the shape is reasonably well shaped but there are quite afew improvements that could be made......

IMPROVEMENTS THAT MIGHT BE MADE

• make the beak thicker and find a way to get rid of the bend
• The head isn't detailed as much as it should be- It's too simple.
• The eye sockets are slightly different sizes