Skulls and Bones as Perfect Things

Skulls and Bones as Perfect Things

Cross-posted to my personal blog, Sparrowmilk.  http://www.sparrowmilk.blogspot.com and my Deivant Art journal http://shadsie.deviantart.com

Today, I got chosen for the August Feature of one of the skull/bone art clubs I’m in on Deviant Art.

http://skull-painting.deviantart.com/

I got to thinking maybe I ought to talk about just why I am so interested in bones and skulls and all things skeletal.  Why do I feel slightly bad “killing” Stalfos in the Legend of Zelda? Why are there so colorful many former animals on my walls? 

Some may wonder if I am obsessed with death.  Let me set the record straight: I AM. I find it difficult *not* to be obsessed with inevitable things, doctor appointments and road trips get my anxiety all up (more in the good ways with the happier things but anxiety can still be a problem).  When I was a child, I was obsessed with growing up like most children are – enjoying being a kid but wondering who and what I was going to be (I had plans… only as an adult did I learn that dreams die, too).  As it was, growing up kind of snuck up on me.  I still feel like a kid inside, but my body grew up and the world changed without my permission.  It was inevitable, and I suspect that death will be like that for me, even if I end up in a position where I can see it coming…  I figure I’ll only *know* when I’m dead if there is an actual afterlife of some kind for “ethereal-me” to register ‘cause I’m pretty sure the good ol’ meat-brain can’t.

A walk in the cemetery or looking/working with a skull… It’s a reminder of the inevitable and the essential equality that we all share – in this if in nothing else. Someday, I’ll never annoy or be a burden on anyone again.  Someday, people will never hope to see a new beautiful work by me again and those who like my voice will no longer get to hear it.  I wonder what the lives of deer were like as I paint them, what they might have felt and smelled – how they experienced the world.  What were things like for a sick or wounded fawn as it laid down?  What was it like for the scavenging creatures for which this was a life-sustaining windfall? All before I found the delicate little jawbones that ended up as one of my favorite necklaces…

http://shadsie.deviantart.com/gallery/6553783#/dm3rq0

There’s a more “life” reason why I love bones.  They are *evidence of life.* Sure, they are only life that was, but growing up and discovering my love for them in the desert of the rural part of Arizona in which I lived, I saw finding a bone as evidence that “there is life here” in a land where most of the life is sparse and thorny. A lot of what I found was livestock-dumping from the local people who butchered the fatted calf or who lost the young dairy calves and just got rid of them in a place where the police wouldn’t find them.  (In hindsight, I’m overjoyed that I didn’t find any human remains out there… phew)!  When I found bones that I knew belonged to actual wildlife (like the time I found a javelina / peccary skull) I was very excited, because it meant that “Javelina still live in my area, cool!”  (I still have that skull, unpainted.  I painted another of the same species that a hunter-uncle gave me).   In my life in Pennsylvania… sure, fishing the skull from a groundhog that had died under the porch of my former residence was nasty, but, it was remains of a sort of unwanted “pet” of ours – a real character that ate the garden pumpkins that year. (It became a piece I sold… I’m sure the owner of it appreciates the affection I put into painting it because I’d felt some affection for the old animal while it was still living).

I love bones, perhaps, most of all, because they are very sculptural.  I have the same kind of attraction to them I suspect Georgia O’ Keefe had.  The “lively” shapes, the smooth beauty of something that was a part of the support structure of a living creature.  The “living sculpture” that is bone makes purely human-created sculptures in stone or bronze seem a little “dead” to me.  Bones are what remain of the cells and the calcium and the proteins that were once used by a vibrant being.  If some scientist in the future ever studies my bones, fossil or otherwise, perhaps their trained eyes will catch that little rebuilt-bit of the radial-neck fracture I suffered in my right arm one time, or can tell by their growth patterns that I was a well-fed, overstuffed American of my time.  My teeth alone would interesting – all the fillings and a little bit of cosmetic-work.   Bones are sculpture – sculpted by life. 

Skeletons, in addition to all, are structure – the underlying structure of a vertebrate animal, like the scaffold of a building or the outline of a novel.  I’m fascinated by that, too. 

So, there you go - My obsession with a thing that I love that loads of people find creepy and others also find beautiful.

The Beast of Time

I finished this today.  I think it may just be one of my better bone-art pieces.  Cow, dead of natural causes (my parents got me the skull long ago at a yard sale and I had it in storage for years before deciding to do anything with it).  Use of random found objects.  The gear is from a car or bike or something - not a clock, but I still think it works.  

One of the weirder questions I've ever asked anyone: "What do you think the color of Time is?"  I asked this to a pair of my online/AIM friends (Hello, Lilith and Laihiriel!) I got the answers of "Blue" and "Black" respectively and thought both made sense.  Blue seems to be the color of "time energy" used most often in fiction/film and black has connotations of mortality (in Western culture) and that certainly relates to the inevitable march of time (also, it's a skull...) 

Don't worry, I don't need that key for anything. I'm pretty sure it was for something I left behind when I left Arizona.  I've kept it aside for eventual use in an art project, and here it is.

Illustration for "Whitt"

Whitt and Oro in the ancient graveyard from the story "Whitt."  For those of you wondering what Ilkhan people look like, here you go.  Whitt and Oro are unusual, however, in that their colors differ from the norm.  I imagine most Ilkhan have brown/gray "deer-features" while Oro is golden and Whitt is white.  The scanner didn't do it justice and I took a few liberties from the story for the artwork - I described the scene as them in a thick-woods while the art displays an open clearing for the sake of featuring a beautiful moon. Also, in the story, I didn't imagine Whitt holding the Lambs' flag - I included it for visual drama.  Also, I'm pretty sure that I'm not a dead hero of some forgotten war.  (In fact, I had in mind that if I were to insert myself in any way as a cameo in any of these Static-Lands stories, it would be as the un-punctual lady-wizard that caused the static night and day cycle in the first place.  I did base her on my inability to be on time unless circumstances force me). 

Anyway, no one's commented on that story to indicate that it was ever read.  It would be nice to get some feedback on it. I did an illustration, anyway.  Nyah. 

Ink and acrylic paint on hot press watercolor paper. I was lucky to find some leftover paper stowed away from some art class I took years ago.  If you're looking to go out and get it, it tends to be expensive.

It's Friday, Have a Skull!

A bit of art/jewelry I finished crafting. 

 

I found the partial skull while on a walk - rather unusual for a surburban area. When I've lived more in the weeds and wilds, discoveries like this were much more common. It was already very clean, but I bleached it mildly just to make sure of its cleanliness, got out my paints, gold leafing pen, beads and etc. and here you go. The shell on the crainium is polished freshwater mussel shell (personally polished - I used to gather mussel shells at one of the creeks in my area and polish them to make jewlery out of them, I broke a few up for mosaic-purposes).  

As I said on my Deviant Art page, if anyone is interested in owning this, make an offer.  By the way, it still has teeth. I am unsure on the species, but guessing by its size, I think it was a young groundhog.

I have so much of this kind of stuff to show off. I suppose if I get an actual readership - should I make Friday "Skull Day" on the blog?