[WIP] Wooden skull

[Tourist]

The trick is to follow the reference closely, even where it's different from what your brain expects.  The reference skull has a flat spot in the middle of the forehead, between and above the eyes.  Your brain is telling you the top of the skull must be a dome, and it misses the flat spot altogether, which makes it look wrong.

Here's my take, I didn't attempt a wood grain:


You palette has some lights and darks, with several colors very close to each other on each end and not much in the middle.  You might want a better set of midtones.  Oh, and I goofed up the teeth some.

Tourist

[turfsurfer]

I've done wood icons and logos a couple times and its a material that has some tricks that make it easy to represent. You can use things like grain-lines and knots to suggest "wood." In the same way that you can suggest a brick wall with only a few bricks, you dont have to draw a lot of them. A few light accents here and there and they just end up being little details that say "I am wood."