# My Skull



## ZDP-189 (Mar 14, 2010)

I know this won't look good on my psych evaluation.

I recently helped my daughter make a miniature ceramic skull for Halloween. She made the cranium and I helped her with the facial features. The result was recognisable, but inaccurate. The last time I handled an anatomically correct skull I was doing a full brain dissection in neuroanatomy in my third year at college nearly twenty years ago. These inaccuracies nagged at me till I was forced to spend a weekend sculpting something rather more ... epic.









This skull is a self-portrait and many of the measurements and shapes have been taken from my own head. I decided to take the dark humour a step further by making it into a cigar ashtray. The open look allowed me to sculpt the detail of the cranial cavity, allows me access to repair shrinkage cracks that are inevitable with a piece like this and gives it utility. Besides the ashtray, it could be a jello bowl or a trick or treat sweetie bowl.

I have taken some minor artistic liberties. Most obvious is the slight difference in the angle of the teeth to the base of the foramen magnum, which I made in a plane so that it would stand up securely on my desk. Likewise the occipital condylae are flattened. The styloid processes are missing, but then a skull of this condition would likely have had these delicate structures missing. There are a lot of fine structures and detail missing from the ventral surface and the inside of the cranial cavity, but at some point you have to cut off. It's descended into the 'uncanny valley' from the perspective of doctors and anatomists where it's so close that tiny details jump out as being wrong, but my wife reminded me that I was developing an unhealthy level of obsession so I'll leave it where it is and biscuit fire it.

You should try it. Clay sculpting is actually very easy. It's a lot easier than woodcarving, especially spoons. It's faster work and if you remove too much, you can just add more on. The hardest part was forming the bowl and for that I just bent a slab around an orange and expanded it a bit. The rest was done by building up, carving away as it dried and set a bit and then adding more as necessary, working to photos. All I had was a kitchen knife, a teaspoon and a toothpick. You just have to watch out for voids and thin sections next to thick ones that may crack. This is my first clay sculpture. My previous experience with clay was the usual schoolboy effort as a teenager, plus helping out on 5 or 6 of my daughter's projects. Anyone could do it.

This brings me back to slingshots. Earthenware offers reasonable tensile strength and excellent compressive strength. I wonder if a slingshot with low forks could be trusted or fialing that, whether there was a way brace the front with G10 or something equally rigid and strong in tension.

It's a little different to moulding fimo/sculptey round a bent rod because of the high temperatures involved in firing, but it would produce a unique slingshot frame for sure and hey ho, I could always send it to Hogancastings!

*Pictures - Greenware*

This is the unfired greenware.


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## ZDP-189 (Mar 14, 2010)

*Greenware*

It's been fired.


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## ZDP-189 (Mar 14, 2010)

*Glazed*


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## lucifer93 (May 4, 2010)




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## whipcrackdeadbunny (May 22, 2010)

That's fantastic Dan, really very good, I didn't know you had such skills with anatomy; obviously you couldn't get all the details in, but the dimensions are quite excellent, you can even see the pronounced, Asiatic cheekbones. To be honest, if you were getting all the plates and troughs in, you could probably work for the police in reconstruction, so for a home project, that really is very good ... why don't you add a bit of flesh to the bones, a few bits of plastacine, and you could have a very scary sculpture on your hands? I especially liked the nice touches around the occipital lobe, the way you had a receiving pit for the central nervous system, and I also liked the synaptic reserve. Very good.


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## Darb (Sep 14, 2010)

I thought the eyes looked a little too round.









/me flicks ash from an MC#4.


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## NoSugarRob (Jun 3, 2010)

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## JoergS (Dec 17, 2009)

Do you really have such prominent brow ridges? That is rare in **** sapiens sapiens.


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## Bill Hays (Aug 9, 2010)

Nice one Dan!

After looking and looking for decent skull lanyard beads, I decided to carve my own. So here's one I carved out of antler then sent off to Hogan Casting to be done up in aluminum and bronze... should make great lanyard beads is what I was thinking...

This skull done up in shiny aluminum on a black lanyard.... along with a shiny aluminum predator slingshot... should be really cool.


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## A+ Slingshots (Jan 22, 2010)

You guys are all amazing!!!! Great Dan!!! That's brilliant Bill!!! Ah it's good to be a part of the brotherhood of artist/artisan.... "I do a little bit of everything" people. I love it!!!!!!


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## NoSugarRob (Jun 3, 2010)

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## ZDP-189 (Mar 14, 2010)

JoergS said:


> Do you really have such prominent brow ridges? That is rare in **** sapiens sapiens.


You're right; that was a 'sculptural typo'. I have very small brow ridges. What happened is I carved the face and then had to bring the forehead forward. I didn't get it quite forward. You've seen me in my video; I look (relatively) normal.


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## Mtnfolk Mike (Aug 23, 2010)

that is cool Dan... nice work..







looks pretty darn real..


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## jmplsnt (Jan 1, 2010)

Fantastic work zdp; if I happened upon that while I was out walking in the woods I'd probably have a fainting spell. Excellent representation and great display of your many-faceted talents.


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## pelleteer (Dec 19, 2009)

That's it, Dan. From now on I'm calling you Bones.


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