How to Draw a Skull for Halloween

An easy step by step to drawing a Halloween skull

This is the last post in the Halloween drawing series. Last time we looked at how to draw a Halloween Bat, in this blog post I’ll be taking you through an easy guide on how to draw a skull – an easy step by step to drawing a Halloween skull.

Is there anything more frightening than to discover the bones of a person passed? In the crypt of a haunted house or worse, performing a creepy dance in an abandoned graveyard! It’s hardly surprising that skeletons are such a feature of Halloween, glistening white bones topped by a grinning skull whose eye sockets are filled with dark malevolence.

Let’s begin with the skull!

Draw the skull’s lower jaw

Draw a line to connect the cheekbones, this will be the lower jaw.

Start from one cheekbone and draw three sides of a slightly curved rectangle to the other cheekbone.

A space for the teeth

Next draw, between the lower jaw and bottom of the upper jaw, a small box that will form the outer boundaries of the skull’s teeth.

Finish the teeth

Keeping it simple we’ll draw 4 lines within the teeth box.

One line going across the box serves to separate the top and bottom teeth; the three short lines going downwards, from the top to the bottom of the box, create the individual teeth.

Complete the jaw

Draw two more lines, from the cheekbones to the bottom edge of the teeth to complete the skull’s jaw area.

Orbits for the eyes

The orbits are the sockets in the skull which the eyes are located in. Here I’ve drawn them with three straight edges and a curved upper edge, experiment with different shapes.

A nasal aperture for the nose

Draw two shapes that look like segments of a pie. Start below the eye orbits and end around the cheekbones.

A skull for Halloween

How to draw a skull: A few other skull designs

Here are a few more skull designs, have a go at these, play around with the different shapes and see what else you can come up with.

Colour your Halloween skull

You can leave your skull as a line drawing but there’s lots of fun to be had colouring it in. Use traditional mediums like pencils and paints, digital tools like Photoshop or a mix of the two.

Skulls also feature heavily in El Día de Muertos, the Mexican ‘Day of the Dead’ festival. This is a mix of traditional South American beliefs and the European ones brought across by the Spanish. The festival takes place on November 2nd. Be inspired by the elaborately decorated sugar skulls that are made during this celebration.