How To Draw A Zombie Skull

Drawing Zombie Skulls was a logical next step as I've done a few Zombie drawing tutorials here on Wizzley now and so I thought this one would add yet another horror dimension to this series. (See how to draw a Zombie Clown) As usual I have created three drawing video tutorials each focusing on an individual step, such as the first one below which we try and sketch the Zombie skull and draft the drawing out to make sure it will work.

I always usually start sketching with soft pencils as they are easier to work with should you make a mistake and need to erase parts of a sketch or the whole thing if it doesn't work out. This Zombie skull drawing is one possible variation that you could practice drawing or you can just gain some inspiration form this art video and draw your own.

I happen to think that when a Zombie skull has been drawn on paper in pencil even just the pencil sketch looks effective as a stand alone piece of art as it has that raw creative energy to it with the sketchy graphite that helps to make the skull look rotten.

Watxch the drawing video tutorial below for part one of this 3 part video series.

As I've always mentioned in other drawing tutorials. Inking is about improving the drawing or design as once you ink you can't go back unless you re-draw the entire thing. It's about adding more details and losing anything that you don't like. Inking can be about adding shadow or really just creating the outline of a design and the coloring in the last stage can be were you determine the light sources of the subject.

The inking stage is entirely up to you how you approach it. For best results I have some super cheap black gel ink pens, some Sharpie markers and a few other ink pens like the Uni-ball Pilot which can be good for finer ink detailing. You will find however that you mainly only use one type of ink pen unless you want a thicker ink line on your artwork which you will get with black Sharpie markers.

Adding variations of ink line thicknesses helps to give your art definition which is something I usually forget to do, something to think about as it really does add something to your art in general.

The Zombie skull needs color now and in the following long video you can see how I achieved some blending effects to help mix the Violet and blue colours together with reds, yellows and the White highlights at the end. I used Crayola Colored pencils for this process and as they are fairly inexpensive you could buy a few more packs than the price of say a pack of Prismacolor pencils.

I layered in some Violet Purple first on some of the obvious shadow areas which were darker such as the eyes, under the cheek bones and collective wrinkles on the skin also got a quick layering of this Purple color. Then a light Blue was added gently to create a sort of mid tone on the rotted skin of the Zombie's skull and then Red colored pencil was lightly colored around the eyes and the gum line to show like a flesh blood color.

Highlight with Yellow around the remaining white areas and also the teeth over the Black to simulate rotten teeth.

The whole drawing was smoothed over with a White pencil which blends all of the colors together.

Watch the video to see the coloring techniques.