Day of the Dead - Dia de los Muertos

It is that time of the year again where the days are getting darker, wetter and colder and we are getting near Halloween AND the Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos. If you know my art, you can imagine that those days have a strong connection with my work, but not just because I decorated real animal skulls or use bones. I have a stronger connection with Dia de los Muertos than Halloween, because I love the vibrant colours and the general style of the celebrations.

I have been wanting to make one or two skulls in this style again for a year. I made two skulls inspired by the traditional Sugar Skulls, but wanted to make some again this year. You may have come across some the vibrant colours and detailed drawings on this blog or my Facebook fanpage:

So I have been used those drawings (left) on a real Fallow Deer skull (right), but I wanted to have a base that looked more like a human skull to get closer to the Sugar Skull feeling and decided to make one of my own. I didn't want to make a realistic human skull, because those are everywhere and I could just have bought a skull replica from Ebay. No, I wanted the skull to be different, manlike and in an urban cartoon style. So I sculpted a master which I cloned and painted. 

Some Sugar Skull art have the coolest elements added to the skull, making the skull feeling like a globe on which all kinds of stuff is happening. So I set about making one with the above type of paint style and one painted more traditionally, but with added elements on the skull:

Title: Flame

Title: Transition Crushed

This one has butterflies on the skull made from plastic from found drinking bottles. Two butterflies are crushed by two piles of money handled by the skeleton.