A skull is the drawing everyone wants to try around October, and most attempts go wrong the same way: the features get placed by guesswork and the whole thing ends up flat. This version builds the skull on a circle and a jaw block, so the proportions are right before a single feature goes in. It takes about ten minutes and a couple of pencils.
The walkthrough follows Cartooning Club Focus on YouTube, shot straight down over a sketchbook with a printed reference skull sitting at the top of the page. The skull turns three-quarters to the left, which is harder than a front view but far more interesting to look at.
What you need
A 2B pencil, a softer 4B or 6B for the darkest tones, a kneaded eraser and a sketchbook. A blending stump helps on the cranium, but a fingertip works. That is the whole kit.
Why the circle matters
The cranium of a real skull is close to a sphere, so a circle gives you the top two thirds for free. The jaw is a box hung off the bottom of it. Once those two shapes are in place, the eye sockets, nose and teeth have somewhere to go, and you can erase everything else.
Where it goes wrong
The eye sockets sit too close to the nose. Leave a gap either side of the nose bridge in step 3. It looks wrong at first and right once the shading is in.
The sockets are not dark enough. Near black at the top, fading down. Press harder than feels reasonable, and switch to a softer pencil.
The teeth are too even. A slightly ragged row reads as bone. A ruler-straight row reads as a cartoon.
More Halloween drawing
Once the skull is down, a shaded ghost uses the same skull face with no jaw, and a jack-o'-lantern makes a good companion piece. The proportions here come straight from how to draw a face, so the two tutorials feed each other. For the fundamentals underneath all of these, start with how to draw.
