Realistic skull with black ink splashes on the side

Forgive the smudges on this page. The wind off the Wash has got into the paint tins again, and I've been working with my sleeves rolled up and my fingers stained the colour of a bruise. You'll want to hear how the ghost train banner turned out. Mr Corrigan took one look at my first sketch, a plain grinning skull on white canvas, and said it looked like a dentist's advert. So I did what you'd have done. I loaded the big brush with black and flicked it at the canvas until the whole thing looked as though someone had dropped the ink pot from the top of the wheel.

The skull came up slowly after that. I shaded the cheekbones grey and left the eye sockets almost bare, so the light from the lamps would sit inside them. Above it I dragged a dark shape like smoke pouring off a funnel, and then I ran three thin red strokes down the right edge where the wind had blown the wet paint sideways. Corrigan grumbled about the cost of the red. I told him the red was for the lights on the wheel, and that was true enough, though it was mostly for me.

On the opening night a small boy stood in front of the banner for most of an hour, pointing at the splashes and asking which ones were real. I told him none of them were, and he looked so disappointed that I went back after closing and painted one more drop, low and to the left, just to keep him honest. The next morning rain had pooled on the tarmac, and when I stood over one of those puddles the red strokes lay on the water like something bleeding slowly into the ground. The wagons were already hitched for Skegness. The skull was still facing the road.

Write soon, and tell Dad the ferris wheel's bearings are not my fault.

Your loving brother, Tom