Faux Halloween Tesla Coil Project-Part 6

Beginnings of the pumpkin body.

I’ve completed a good deal of work on the project in the past few days, but at this point it is not very exciting.  I created the cross braces for the scaffolding of the tower.  The cross braces were created in the same way as the long pieces.  (An earlier blog post has pictures of the long pieces.)  They are pieces of craft stick covered in paper maché.  At this point, I have not taken any pictures because a stick covered with newsprint is not really very exciting.  It took extra time for them to dry because of the rainy weather we have had here.  I hope to get a coat of gesso on them today and maybe get some of them painted orange or black.  I doubt I'll get much more than that done today.

While I had some extra time, I started working on the body of the anthropomorphic pumpkin figure.  I am planning that the pumpkin torso will be an elongated pumpkin shape and that the head will be a rounder pumpkin shape.  The photo above shows the beginnings of the torso of the figure.  I created the base of the figure out of aluminum foil pressed into a tightly into a more or less pear shape.  The aluminum foil is covered with a layer of masking tape.  To create the ridged shape of a pumpkin, I taped on layers of newsprint.  This will eventually be covered with masking tape and then layers of strip paper maché.  The gaps between the layers of newsprint seem wide at this point, but they will fill in with paper maché and not be as pronounced.  The head will be created in the same manner.

It feels like this project is taking a long time, but it is actually progressing quite well.  This project has many components that need to be created before the diorama can be assembled.  Once the cross braces are painted and glue together the diorama will start to take shape fairly quickly.  My projects are not projects that are completed in a day or a week.  The time that is put into a piece is what separates folk art from being a craft project.  I wish I had started the project a little sooner, but there are a lot of demands on my time.  I do what I can when I can.