I’m told that I start many of my posts with “when I was a kid…” and I think that’s true. So with that in mind…
When I was a kid, I loved drawing skulls. I drew them at school, I drew them at home, I drew them on the weekends while I was hanging out with friends. It’s a miracle my parents didn’t amass a trunk full of skull pictures, but I’m guessing they threw them out, a part of my childhood best forgotten. I’m not sure why I was so fascinated by death – after all, no one in my family had died at the time – but I was, and actually had trouble sleeping many nights, preoccupied with thoughts of my own demise.
I never said I was a normal child.
Today, I have a much healthier outlook on life, but… I still find skulls interesting, in a totally-not-Dexter sort of way. These hand carved mother of pearl shell skulls, for example, are absolutely beautiful.
Kind of neat, eh? These were created by New Jersey based Filipino artist Gregory Halili. Mr. Halili hand-carves these bas-reliefs in gold-lip and black-lip mother-of-pearls shells from his home country, and then paints the bas-reliefs with oil paint. The final effect is what you see above and below. Simply beautiful.
This darker shell on the right is my absolute favorite. I have no idea what I would do with one of these, but I absolutely want one.
The details, especially around the teeth, are quite intricate. These either take a lot of time to produce, or they don’t, and that’s just what Gregory wants us to believe so he can charge exorbitant amounts of money for them. Either way, well done!
Alright, who am I kidding? They’re all pretty damn cool.
I’ll say it again, pretty cool, right? If you’re interested in finding out more about the man, head over to his website and take a look around. Who knows, maybe you can even convince him to sell you some of his work.
