Materials

Get some paper that can withstand hard pencil strokes. When you're all jacked up on speed metal and Milwaukee's Best, you're going to need something that can hold up to your artistic rage. Put me in a room with a full cooler and a Pantera CD, and the only things I can draw on are a fucking mattress or a bullet-proof vest. One time I tried to draw on the wall, and my whole goddamn living room caved in.

As far as pencils, I go with charcoal because they're the blackest. If you use one of those grayish, halfassed number two pencils, then you might as well only draw half a skull. Because that's what you'll be doing anyway. To get the full effect, you need lead as black as the devil's heart. I use nothing but soft charcoal and bags of Kingston. Everything else can suck my full-on metal boner.

The Drawing

Now that you've got your music and materials, all you need is your imagination. And you don't even need that. That's what the music is for. Put the point of that pencil down on the paper and let the music do the rest. Let's start with the eye.

Look at it. That ain't no regular fuckin' skull eye. That's a goddamn serpent eye, and it's about to stare into the very core of your soul to see if you're worthy of the mosh. Are you worthy of the mosh? You'd better be. Because in about ten seconds, that skull is going to know, and if you're not ready, it will begin the mosh without you, leaving you standing there with your teeth in your mouth like you own something. But you don't own anything except the wake of thrash that this skull is leaving behind. Look at the glow around that iris. That's 3,000 years of built-up metal aggression that's about to be unleashed. Are you ready for it? If you drew it, then you are. Don't move on until you can.

Once you have the eye down, draw another one just to the right of that (where your own other eye would normally be). Make sure the tops of the sockets are pointing inwards so it looks like he's frowning. Remember that this skull is fuckin' pissed off because he's dead and he hasn't rocked in probably a thousand years or more. Right between the two eyes, I like to put a shadow to accentuate the frown because skulls don't have eyebrows. That's probably another reason that he's ready to kick someone's ass.

I used symbolism in this shadow, too. I turned it into an arrow, pointing down. Pointing down to HELL because that's where all thrashers and moshers go to spend an eternity shredding with demons, and guitar-battling old blues-playing black men who sold their souls for musical talent. They want their spiritual freedom, but they ain't about to get it. Not unless they can outshred the musical forces of fucking Satan.

Right above that shadow, you're going to need a crack in the skull. It's required, and if you don't have it, you might as well set your house on fire and start licking male buttholes for a living. The crack is everything. It not only represents the involuntary release of pent-up metal, but it also symbolizes how that skull once freaked out in a bar and got clocked with a fucking pool cue right in front of his own mother. But not before he tore ass through the room, stabbing dudes in the throat and junk-slapping their girlfriends for letting him do it. Without the crack, you have no story. And without a story, a skull is just something some fag holds up and talks to in a play.

Check that shit out. You think that skull wanted that there? You damn right he did. Why? Because he's that fuckin' metal, that's why. Looking at that picture now, my only regret is not putting a demon escaping from the top. Maybe a ghost guitar, rising to release its badass riffs on the world. Or a motorcycle guy ramping out of it and throwing two fingers in the air to show his allegiance to rock. He'll fucking rock and ramp all over the whole globe, and there won't be a goddamn thing anyone can do to stop him because he's just that badass. I'll probably add that in after I finish this tutorial.

Meaning

If your drawing doesn't have a central message, then it's useless and you might as well be raping your neighbor because she keeps laying out, sunbathing, while you mow the lawn, and she knows you're staring at her but she keeps laying out anyway, just begging you to fuck her even if she pretends she doesn't want it. She might as well have a sign on her back deck that says, "Please rape me. I'm asking for it because that's what I'm into."

In my drawing, I decided before hand that I wanted it to be an epic battle between God and Satan. Then, I said, "fuck all that God shit" and just drew a rose that was dripping blood instead.

In the world of metal and skulls, roses don't drip dew - they drip blood. If you didn't know that already, then you don't need to be drawing a skull, and you should take the CD out of your stereo and write a letter of apology to Slayer for your ignorance.

"But John," you ask, "roses represent all that is pretty and nonmetal about the world. Why would you use a rose? Are you gay?"

I'm not gay. You're a stupid, stupid person for asking me that, and you should commit suicide for even thinking it in the first place. If you were half the thrasher you thought you were, you'd already know that the rose's stem wraps around the skull, its thorns scraping the bony shell much in the same way that fuzz-bass scrapes your musical taste buds. It spreads its leaves to soak up rays of power chords, sustaining a never-ending lifecycle of mosh and slam dancing that keeps the musical rage ever flowing.

Oh, wait. Did I forget to mention the fact that this rose turns into BARBED WIRE? Never question the teacher, little one. In order to fully understand the art of the skull drawing, you need to first forget everything you've ever been taught in your entire life, including the very basics that are needed for survival. Then, you need to relearn them again so that you can forget them a second time. Then, when your mind is clear, you need to again learn those survival things so that you don't die and then don't learn anything else except drawing a skull, using this tutorial. But learn reading first because without it, this guide will be useless to you unless you just want to look at the pictures and advertisements.

Oh yeah... did I also mention that its leaves turn into fucking FIRE? They do because fire is the root of all metal. Without fire, you cannot have metal. Just look at the Periodic Table of Elements. The first thing you'll see on that chart is fire. Then a whole bunch of gasses and then metal. Without that initial fire, those eleven metals could not exist. And that, young head-banger, is what we call symbolism and imagery.

The rest is just fundamentals. Make sure your shadows are softer at the source of light and darker at the tail end of it. I'd suggest studying the leaves and flowers before you draw them so that they take on a certain sense of realism. The rest of the piece is based in fantasy, so that's where the contrast is centered. There's a fine balance there, though, so don't make the flower too realistic, or it will offset the rest of the drawing so much that it will become the focal point of the drawing. And misplaced focal points ain't metal at all.