Usually I have an idea of what I want to make before I start and will stencil on an outline of the image. For this piece I didn’t have access to a printer, and I had a huge urge to create an image, so I decided I would just draw a skull from looking at an image off of my laptop. I really surprised myself at how accurate I could get the skull without a stencil. 
Initially I had chosen to use green, black and shades of greys to make this image but after starting remembered I had bought some new magenta paint. I had been experimenting with magenta in some of my Copic illustrations and liked the way it looks against black and grey tones. I decided to go with these colours in my painting to see how it translated with paint. The above image was after about 2 hours of playing with colours to chisel out the shape of the skull. At this stage I was just playing with dark and light tones to create the 3d effect while also adding extra size to areas of the skull where my freehand drawing was off. I also realised here that the skull was looking strange in its relation to the background, I wanted to make it look like it was sitting there not randomly floating.
To create the sense of the skull resting on a surface i brought the black out from behind the skull and lightly created a shadow line under the mandible. It isn’t 100% accurate but it still creates the illusion upon glancing at the image. To further the effect i made the magenta around the front of the skull lighter by mixing in bits of white to contrast with the shadow and to create a foreground to the black. Thanks for reading and following my art.
If you have any questions, if you would like to buy a piece or even if you would like to have a paint please email me at elliotcrombie@gmail.com. This piece is still available for $250.
Thankyou
Elliot