Halloween Goblin Heads Painted

I have been working on this project on and off all year.  After a few bumps in the road, I have finished painting the goblin heads.  I am pleased with the results.  There are always things I would like to have come out better.  Sometimes if I keep trying to "fix" a piece that I end up just making a mess.  So at this point I am calling the heads finished.  Note:  If you want more information on the construction of the heads, scroll back through my previous posts at folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com   (I have been blogging about these heads since the beginning of the year.)

The heads were  made with hangers built in because they will be hung on a rope.  
 
I liked the color of the heads.  They have a lot greens and reds, giving the heads a mottled color.  Ithought I would blog a little bit about the painting in case someone might be interested in how to achieve that outcome.  When I was new to crafts, I thought I could just slap on one color of paint and it was done.  I was always disappointed with the outcome.  It took some time to learn how to paint a piece so that it was interesting.

The heads are made from paper mâché.  Before the heads were painted, I sanded them fairly smooth using a sanding block.  I don't do a lot of sanding, I mainly want to get rid of any flour paste lumps and high spots.  There are a number of low spots, but I was not trying very hard to get rid of them.  The low spots help with creating the mottled appearance.  What I was really trying for with the sanding was to call it good enough. 

After sanding, I gave the heads two coats of white Gesso.  The Gesso covers over the print on the strips of newsprint used to make the heads.  It also helps seal it and fills in some of the depth of the low spots.  I let the Gesso dry thoroughly between coats.

I used acrylic paints for the project, but they are better quality paints, not craft paints. 

The inside of the head was painted with Mars Black.

Base color and tooth detail.

The areas around the eyes, gums, and lips were painted with a mixture of Burnt Umber and Cadmium Red Light.  I actually had to paint them a couple of times because my first mix had too much red in it.  The red was too bright.  I ended up going over the areas with a washes of Burnt Umber until I could knock the color down some.

Brushing Raw Sienna over a small area.

The teeth were painted with four layers of paints.  The first layer was a mixture of White and Raw Sienna mixed with a little Pearlizing Medium.  I was hoping to give the teeth a more enameled appearance.  I was not that impressed with the results though.  The next coat was a watered down wash of Burnt Umber.  I selectively painted it into the crevices and low spots in the teeth to make them look dark and decayed.  The third coat was a stronger mix of Burnt Umber in only some of the crevices and low spots.  The last coat consisted of tiny dabs of straight Burnt Umber in even fewer spots.  The multiple coats of paint gave the teeth a lot of depth. 

Wiping off excess to leave paint in the low spots.

 The base coat for the heads was a mixture of Cadmium Yellow Light (dominant color) and Payne's Grey (mixing color).  I don't have the proportions, I just mix until I like the color.  It created a bright green. If I had added more Payne's Grey, it would have turned a more gray-green color.  However, I wanted the base coat to be very bright.  The translucent nature of the color also allowed more light to pass through and hit the bright white of the Gesso, allowing more light to bounce back through the paint.  My husband came in at that point and I told him it was only the base coat.  He said, "You would never know."  I could have stopped there, but I felt that I could do better than bright green.

Raw Sienna is dabbed on, then lifted off.

The mottled appearance was achieved by working in a small area at a time.  Using a bristle brush, I scrubbed on Raw Sienna on a few square inches, feathering the edges so that there would not be a hard edge.  As soon as the paint was on, I used a paper towel to scrub the majority of it off.  The paint tended to remain in the low areas, and leave only a thing sheen on the majority of the skull.  I might have to do some areas a couple of times to be satisfied with the result.  Next, working in the same area, I would use a smaller stiff brush to dab on dots of paint.  Then, I would carefully dab the dots of paint with a paper towel trying for a dab and lift without smearing the paint to far.  I think the results were satisfactory.  If I did not like it, I could wipe it off and repaint the area again until I did.

I let the heads dry completely for a couple of days just to make sure they were well dried.  After that, I gave it two coats of Exterior Satin Acrylic Sealer.  I would have preferred a Matte finish, but I had not been out to buy any due to the Corona lockdown.  I used what I had available.

These heads are part of a larger project.  Check back in about a week and I will have some new pictures of the project.


 

Halloween Goblin Heads Ready for Painting

Goblin heads ready for painting.

These heads are part of a larger project.  I am working on a life-size doll for Halloween.  She is supposed to holding up the heads of the Goblins.

I started the project thinking I would make some gruesome shrunken heads.  However, the project was not going well in a number of areas. Things were just not working as I planned.  Sometimes it is just better to figure out something better than the original plan.  So I changed my plan from shrunken heads to Goblins. 

A Coke can for size reference.

I had drilled holes into the heads because the mouths and eyes would have been sewn shut.  I needed to do something with the holes.  I had made eyes for the shrunken heads, but the eyes were small because they would have been dehydrated.  They were not going to be the right size for a normal head.    Rather than trash the project completely, I cut out the eyes and mouths with a craft knife and filled them in using paper clay.  Hopefully, those areas will not be as noticeable once the heads are painted.  The noses were also small, but I left them, because who knows what a Goblin nose looks like anyway.

First strip layers over the skull mold.

One of the skulls removed from the mold in pieces.

I painted some flat back glass marbles (the kind used in floral and home decorating) with black glass paint and heated them to make the paint bond permanently.  (By the way, I have a small dedicated toaster oven for these projects.  It saves on having to clean a home oven after using that product.)  I ran into some unexpected problems with the eyes.  I made three pair of eyes all painted the same color: black.  I wanted the eyes to be a solid black.  There are no pupils, just a deep soulless eye, something like a shark's eye.  When they came out of the oven, one pair was black, and the other two pair came out with one black eye and one eye that looked silver.  Unfortunately, these decorator marbles are not very consistent when it comes to size.  I had picked out each set of marbles so they would match in size.  I painted some more eyes, and the same thing happened, but since I had made several of them I was able to mix and match.  I have no explanation as to why some of the eyes changed color.  I would guess that it has something to do with how the light is refracting through them.  

Anyway, with enough eyes in hand I began to mount the eyes.  This is a retrofit project.  If I had been doing this project from scratch I would have done it differently.  When I made the faces, I molded strip paper mâché over a plastic skull.  When I had enough layers on, I cut the head off the skull mold, then put it back together using more layers of paper mâché.  (While I had them apart, I also made some modifications to the skulls.  See earlier posts for details on how I made the modifications and how I put the skulls back together.)  Rather than take the whole head apart again, I used the holes I had carved into the face to place the eyes.  If I had started from scratch, I would have painted the inside, and mounted the eyes and teeth while I had the head apart.

While the eyes and mouth were open, I painted the interior black.  It would actually have been better to mount the eyes before I painted the inside,  but then I would not have had the eye holes open to use for painting.  I would have preferred to glue the card stock directly to the paper mâché, but since I was also adding paper clay, I was not too worried about the stability of the mounting.  I once saw a tutorial on the internet in which the person reminded everyone that to glue pieces together before painting because your glue job was only as sturdy as your last coat of paint.

I mounted some black card stock to the underside of the holes for the eyes with hot glue.  This was the backing to hold the eyes in place.  The glass eyes were hot glued to the backing.  Paper clay was pressed around the eyes and underneath the lids to fill in the eyes.  It was a difficult job trying to mount the eyes while slipping my fingers in through the mouth hole.  I would swear that those creatures were biting me.  Sometimes it was difficult to get my fingers out.

Once the eyes were mounted I turned my attention to the mouth.  When you cut into a strip paper mâché piece, you can see the layers of paper.  I used a small dental pick type tool to push a hole in between layers and separated some layers slightly.  I twisted a very thin wire tightly at the top, and then left an opening in the middle of the wire, then twisted tightly again at the bottom.  I pressed the wire into small bits of paper clay and formed a tooth.  The opening in the middle of the wire would lock into the clay to hold the tooth in place and keep it from slipping once the tooth was dry.  When the tooth was formed, I put some multi-purpose glue in between the layers of the paper mâché and also added some glue along the gum line.  I stuck the bottom end of the wire into the hole I had made and pressed the layers of paper mâché back together.  That "rooted" the tooth.  The glue along the gum line also helped to keep the tooth in place.

I found that making the paper clay teeth sharp while trying to put them in place was too difficult.  You can do one or the other but not both.  I shaped them as best I could, and waited for them to dry.  The teeth were sharpened using small needle files.  I suppose if I had thought about it a bit further, I could have made the teeth and painted them before mounting them.  However, I am not sure I would have made them so that they would look right for a particular mouth if I had pre-made the teeth.  I did what I did, and now I am ready to go on to the painting.

I am excited to see how these heads are going to turn out.