The Inspiration Behind My Favorite Piece I've Created

My Technology Skull drawing is my favorite piece I have created so far. It took me the longest to make and was created for a drawing 1 course I took during my Bachelor's degree. I did not go to school for art, but took art classes every chance I could. For this final project, we had to put a modern twist on a classic piece of art. The art piece we were tweaking had to be in the public domain, but could be anything we wanted. Similarly, the modern twist could be anything. And we had to do it all in graphite.

Vanitas Still Life painted by Bartholomäus Bruyn

I found myself overwhelmed looking up old paintings from artists I had never heard of before. Finally I found a painting of a skull on a shelf, Vanitas Still Life by Bartholomäus Bruyn. This image felt simple enough to complete in the needed time frame, but also deep and meaningful enough to make a statement. Vanitas art utilizes symbols of death/change and was common in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is a reminder of the inevitability of such things. I'm not sure if that is comforting or creepy. However, I liked that it took everyday objects like a normal still life would, but added this somewhat darker imagery. This was something I could easily put my own modern twist on and I quickly came up with several sketches.

Technology Skull by Rebecca Brand

For my version, I decided to add things from the recent past to symbolize how we perceive objects as obsolete even if they may still be fully functional. Technology is perceived obsolescence at it's finest. I drew my skull wearing headphones still plugged into a portable CD player. I replaced the candle with an empty CD rack. I live in the age of digital downloads, but I grew up mainly listening to CDs of my favorite musicians. Today we ditch our phones when a new version comes out and I imagine this CD player was ditched for something cooler at the time, the CD rack left empty.

This piece took me over 20 hours to make and I couldn't be happier with the outcome. While it isn't perfect, I think that's what makes it feel more like my own rather than a cheap imitation of something that was once great and has now been lost in the shuffle of modern life. I can see my own style coming through despite trying to closely copy parts from the original.

And you can buy tiny prints on my etsy shop if you like it too.