Reading the Skull

The book provides advanced instruction on how to identify key facial features, as well as indicators and anomalies in bone structures, to help better identify and decipher distinguishing characteristics—aiding artists to help in illustrating specific and unique details in facial structure and features.

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While there are a handful of introductory texts and resources on 2D drawing for facial identification and reconstruction, most often they don’t go beyond this cursory presentation of the subject. There is need for an advanced text available for artists who wish to learn more about reading and understanding the skull to inform more accurate and detailed 2D craniofacial reconstruction work.

Reading the Skull: Advanced 2D Reconstruction fills this need by providing instruction on how to identify basic features, as well as indicators and anomalies in bone structures, to help in illustrating more specific and unique details in facial structure and features. Since artists are most frequently visual learners, the book presents comparative photos of skulls with life photos to help better identify and decipher distinguishing facial characteristics. Because many forensic artists perform few reconstructions each year— and have very little exposure to skulls - the author has written this text to show examples of distinct elements in the skull for artists to see, compare, and learn. In doing so, it provides those who do not regularly work with skulls more exposure to them and allows readers the ability to apply such information and better extrapolate features for the purpose of more accurately rendering an individual’s unique facial features. When examining the skull closely, each feature can be more detailed based on what the bone is indicating, and the work can be more accurate to that specific skull. Characteristics such as the ears, facial harmony and symmetry, shape of eye and brow, nose and mouth, the aging process, sex and ancestral background— among others— are all singular to that skull and adds to the gestalt of that face to make it more identifiable as an individual.

Reading the Skull is a ground- breaking collection of the author’s personal study and research, other published works from the literature on facial features, as well as numerous examples from donors to forensic anthropology centers in the US. Work presented draws upon new information from anthropologists and others in related fields and disciplines who continue to study facial features based on the skull. As such, it provides a fresh perspective, summarizing several studies and work together in a single book.