This is the skull of the Harvard Mastodon which resides in the Harvard Museum of Natural History in the room of giant extinct mammals. It is huge, dark and scary, it cried out - or trumpeted - to be drawn with my blackest charcoal pencil.
The HMNH has a great collection of articulated animal skeletons as well as stuffed creatures and they are welcoming to artists. I did these drawings in 2003; they are darker and more dramatic than my usual work, but that's what the skull called for.
