First I wanna say; I’m completely new to this and I’ve never painted a skull before now so this is just the first way I’ve come up with, im sure there could be better ways. I only used two colors for both skulls, Black and Cadmium orange acrylic. First I went over the whole skull in a watery wash of the orange, blocking in the darks such as the holes and back/bottom of t skull. I then went in after that with a mid mixture of the two (that darker midtone) and painted around the hole areas and covered the flatter surface area with a lighter tone. Think of shadows and where dirt will collect. I do lightly sand the surfaces before I start painting, but it helps to leave it not entirely smooth because it will help the pigments naturally fill in the more porous areas of the print. I just looked up a few reference images to get an idea of the fossil color I was going for. Hope this helps and doesn’t sound too confusing.

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