Not too long ago, I submitted the above piece to DA, a sort of tribute to the dark ideas that inspire all artists. It was the sort of image that I always wanted to draw, combining two images so completely apart thematically yet come together so asthetically. In a wierd twisted sort of way it made sense. A lot of artist throughout the centuries have used death and skulls as subject matter to more or less deal with their issues on mortality. But apart from its representation of death, the skull in particular holds a fascination for us, because it's also the finest example of nature's engineering. I mean c'mon, it's a box for our brains. It's functional and form-fitting. It has all-purpose holes for your other squishy parts, like eyes, ears, nasal cavities. It's everything your head wants in one little calcium-enriched package.

And still it symbolizes death, which makes sense. You can't look at a skull like you would a car part and say,"Oh, there's that cerebellum-containment unit I'm looking for, I need that." It's not something you can just replace on a whim, unless your really rich or have an eccentric cousin who dabbles in super-science. You need it, or your pretty much a mush-head and nobody likes that. Its symbolism is obvious, yet our curiousity compels us to examine it further. It doesn't really repel us like a supposed object of death would, in fact, it's that connection to our mortality only draw us further in. And you can hold it in your hand and play out that Hamlet scene you always wanted to, c'mon you know you wanted to do that. Hell, people have gone so far as to make them into drinking vessels, of course they we're a lot more enthusiastic about using body parts for decorations back then.

But being artists, we can't all use actual skulls. We have used our skills of representation and our imaginations and made the symbol of death our own. Whether we are demostrating our bad-assery thru tatts and jewelry, darkly comtemplating portends of doom, defying typical assertions of the concept of death, or eat it like candy so we can overcome our sorrow, we use the skull because everyone reckognizes it. Whether it represents death or not, you have to admit,the skull is pretty neat to look at.

Anyway, sorry to be so verbose. I've went ahead and collected a bevy of skull-related artwork from here in DA, some from a forum thread I started, others here and there, but all from DeviantArt. I've also included the artist resposible for each piece so you can see their non-skull related artwork...... Enjoy, and don't fret, in the end it's only a bone.

To see the whole collection go here [link]
also a few other fun skull-related links [link] [link]

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