Kimberly Parker

Senior Art Blog

Sugar Skull 

A sugar skull is a one of a kind decoration and symbol. Sugar skulls celebrate and honor the dead. There is a holiday in Mexico called “The Day of the Dead” and instead of mourning over the dead, they celebrate their lives. The people of Mexico use these sugar skulls to symbolize death by using a skull, and decorating it with bright festive colors to celebrate the death. This quarter, we were asked to make our own sugar skulls. So, I did my independent research about what sugar skulls really were. I sketched an idea in my sketchbook, seeing what designs I would like on my sugar skull. I looked up some ideas online and finally saw a sugar skull that I really liked. I sketched something similar to it and then began my construction of my skull. 

We used paper mache, water, a straw, and lots of Vaseline to do construct the skulls! First I laid down on the table and had my peer Christian get the paper mache and water ready to put on my face. While I was on the table, I rubbed Vaseline all over my face, over my eyebrows and lips so the paper mache would not stick to my face and the mask would come right off after it hardened. I put a straw in my mouth so I would be able to breathe. Christian then began to put the paper mache over my face, pressing dow on every piece to mold the mask into the shape of my face. After putting layers and layers of this paper mache on, we waited for the mask to harden, this took about five or six minutes. 

After the mask hardened, we peeled it off of my face, immediately I wanted to wipe the slimy Vaseline off of my face! During the next art period, I used a pencil to start sketching out on my skull the designs I wanted. I did not erase anything on it once. Once I started to sketch, I liked everything that I drew. Once the sketching was done, I picked out all of the bright colors I wanted. I mixed red and white to make the pink, blue and yellow to make the green I wanted, and so on. I used different brushes for different parts and different brush strokes. I painted until I felt like I had my sugar skull master piece. That is what I ended up with, a master piece! 

A sugar skull, is an artists rendering of a human skull. They are made from hardened sugar, the use of sugar art is something that was introduced to Mexico by Italian missionaries. The abundance of sugar in Mexico, meant that it was both cheap and easy to obtain, which allowed for the sugar art to catch on fast.  Sugar skulls have become an important part of observing and celebration of the Mexican holiday (El dia de los Muertos/The Day of the Dead) Sugar skulls tend to incorporate the use of floral patterns and/ or other intricate designs, as well as diamonds.

I came up with the design for my sugar skull from looking at sugar skulls that already existed.  I searched google to find several examples before starting to sketch what mine might look like. In the end however, my sugar skull became slightly more random, and less traditional. I included the the exposed teeth and jaw, with some of the outlined features, but almost everything else was football inspired. There is a diamond at the center of the skulls head, but other than that, the sugar skull that I created wasn't as customary as most sugar skulls are.


I think the most interesting part of the entire process was the creation of the mold. We used our own faces for this process.  By placing layers of wet plaster into the contours of our faces, we could create a replica of what we looked like, but with plaster. After the plaster dried and hardened, we removed them from our faces and proceeded to paint the designs we intended for the final product.

More information on the Day of the Dead and sugar skulls: 

here

A sugar skull is a Mexican mask that is usually made with hardened sugar and designed for the Day of the Dead, similar to our Halloween, in an almost spooky way. The main design for sugar skulls are skeleton faces. For this piece I began with creating my mask to get an idea on what would be possible on my canvas. Kamilah and Sophie helped me with this step so I give them credit for the finished product. I then researched some usual designs of a sugar skull and a lot of the same designs came up. I decided to put a twist on a classic art and really make it my own. This project was done right around the time of Halloween and I was planning on dressing up as Harley Quinn (the Joker's girlfriend from Batman). Her style is almost Mardi Gras inspired and I put this into consideration when I was drafting my design. I chose to sneak in a heart, as the lips, and a spade, as the nose. Trying to make it look as professional as possible I smoothed down what I could and trimmed the outer rim of the mask. I then based it with a few layers of white Gesso paint. After it dried I sketched, in pencil, an outline of my final design. I chose my colors, red and black, and began to paint it. At one point I decided that I wasn't fully satisfied with the style of the lips therefore I painted over that part with the white Gesso and started again. Even after everything was painted to my liking I touched up, making my lines as neat and crisp as possible. After all was said, done, and dry I carefully glazed the front of the mask. I had to be very precise with this process because of possible smearing and blending. Overall I am extremely pleased with the final result and would only want to change the texture of the mask if I could do it all again, perhaps sand it down. 

For my Q1 artwork, i wanted to start off with drawing some easing stuff like different cartoons. So i focused on drawing angry bird and hello kitty, which i never had tried before. I tried to do different for my artwork because i never had drawn colorful cartoons for this class before. Then i tried to come back to drawing my most favorite art work, which is drawing portraits. I searched online to find some difficult portraits with some difficult shading in order to learn something new. I found so many kids portraits that i was going to draw them but unfortunately could not do so. The decided one is enough for beginning with some difficult shading to show face features clearly. Another piece of some little design shows a henna design, which is all my creativity (nothing from internet). Its just for fun (:
For suger skull project, i could not actually made my skull but i tried to print my design on the paper and make it to look similar to actual skull. I found this design by researching some suger skulls and finally added some of my art to make it more beautiful and creative.

To me I think I even heard the word for the first. I was unfamiliar with this but when Miss Hull assigned us to do this then I google this to know how does it look like. Sugar skull is actually the number of cultural phenomena and it is basically associated with Mexican events like Dead day and Roman Catholic day. I think you can describe your feelings emotions or happiness by making this and by creating different designs. It was not too difficult for me to choose this design because I love flowers so I decided to make its eyes like flowers and then I made flowers on head that aslo represent that I like flowers. It was fun while doing this in the whole class watching others faces and skulls. So I enjoyed this a lot. 

To me, a sugar skull is a creation to adorn and celebrate the life of someone who is deceased. Sugar skulls are from the Mexican celebration on the Day Dead, which is a national holiday. It’s main focus is to get family and friends together and remember the loved ones who have died. Sugar skulls are brought to graves of children as well as toys. They are gifts for both the living and the dead, made usually from granulated white sugar, icing and other decorative accessories. They are edible but are normally used as decoration. 

The decorations of a sugar skull are to represent how you feel or felt about the loved one or just to make something so ugly as death be beautiful. I thought about the death of my father as I decorated my skull. I decided that I only wanted to remember the good things about my dad, which I incorporated into the mask by using bright colors and  and images such as hearts, peace signs, flowers and smiley faces. My father was a really peaceful man although very cautious and would keep himself and his loved ones safe at any cost. 

The process of making this particular sugar skull wasn’t too time consuming but it was a very tedious process. First I had to find a person who would let me use their face as a base. Then I had to tediously apply plaster over their face, trying to capture the full figure of their face so that when the plaster dried it would actually look like a skull. 

Senior Art Blog Q1

Drawing check-ins/ Sketch Book Journal/Q1 Benchmark

During this first Q1 Ms. Hull introduced us to a new website that provides different art projects and drawings. I have used many of my sketching idea from the website http://www.drawspace.com which provided me with a series of optional drawing methods and helped me improve my drawing sketches and incorporated drawing techniques along with examples from other artist. Draw space provides drawing from beginners to advanced artist with examples of their artwork that helped me improve my artist abilities from standard drawing to working with advanced levels of the website. I strongly enjoyed exploring the site and viewing the other drawings that showed me a variety of many artists and their own personal drawing skills. Being able to have access to a site that can teach you with a visual example and also write up followed by it to make it easy for artist of that level to understand.

First Check-in journal- For my first check- in journal I demonstrated the use of shadowing in the detail of my eye and eye brow sketches. From using draw space it has shown me what many of the artist do for the detail of the eyes giving it a structural realistic effect on its viewers. Drawing the eye is one of my confident standpoint because I have been familiar with that drawing standard in previous art classes and found myself drawing doodles of eyes in other sketchbooks that I have collected over the years. "Eyes are the window to the soul" and through my drawing I incorporated that messaged by drawing a series of different structures of eyes. 

Second check- in journal- I chose to demonstrate the use of shadowing with also helped me complete my first check- in journal of the eyes drawing. Shadowing is preferably my favorite thing to do with many of my sketches because it gives off a realistic feel and gives the drawing a structural effect.

Q1 Senior Art Benchmark - Q1 Benchmark for Senior Art was to create a Sugar Skull design that presents both features of the original design of the traditional Mexican heritage with touch of your own creations within it. Sugar Skulls are a traditional folk art from Southern Mexico used to celebrate Day of the Dead that involve colors and effects that represent vibrant colors and detail. The process of my product was to incorporate a traditional skeleton/zombie feel for Halloween. To get my design I used my own face as the structure from water paper plaster and waited for that to cool. Once I had hard mask I then copied my design our my sketch book onto the hard product. After the drawing part, I then began to paint on my design. The finished product was then glazed for a finishing look.