As I said in my last blog post, I am working on two long-term projects. I am pausing blogging about the carousel for a short time in order to get the other project under way. While I do not have a time crunch on the carousel project, the pumpkin needs to be completed by Halloween. So, I will be blogging for a couple of weeks on that project, then going back to the carousel project.
Some of you may have seen pictures of the Green Man on signs or pictures of them in books. (You can also see plenty of examples in Google Images.) Basically, a Green Man is anthropomorphic figure that represents the spirit of vegetation. Usually, he is represented in summer when everything is green and in full growth. My intention is to portray the Green Man near harvest time, when the growing season is coming to a close and the fruits and vegetables are at their peak and autumn is just beginning to come into season. I will have to see how it goes when I get that far. I have concept of what to portray, but I will allow some of the details to develop organically as I go along. But the first step is just to begin, and that is where things are today.
I am starting at the very beginning of how I make a pumpkin as it has been well over a year since one. If you are interested in my other projects, scroll back through the blog posts or look at the blog at folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com
This is a mold of a pumpkin. I created this mold by covering a real pumpkin with strip paper mâché. Then I carefully cut the paper mâché off the pumpkin and then put it back together again. You will see the method for this later in this post, so I won't go into that here, other than to say that when cutting the mold off the pumpkin with a craft knife, I nicked the live pumpkin in places, and that caused the pumpkin to rot rather quickly. If you plan to make a mold from a real pumpkin, you might not want to use it as part of your decorations afterward.
Another option to use for a mold would plastic pumpkins, which are more likely to be available at other times of the year. Or make your own pumpkin shape. There are plenty of ways to do that, and I have used that for some of my paper mâché pumpkins.
In the photo above on the right, the pumpkin mold had been covered with a layer of Press and Seal. Press and Seal is found in the plastic wrap aisle at many grocery stores. This product will protect the mold from moisture, and the paper mâché will peel off from it easily when the project is finished. It is very thin, and slightly tacky on one side. If you use smaller strips, you can coat the pumpkin with it without having too much of a build up from the material.
This is one of those Styrofoam heads that you can find in craft stores. From past use of this mold, I have found that the features need more definition before starting to paper mâché. The features that are on the base then to flatten out over multiple layers of paper mâché. I built up the nose, lips, and cheeks with masking tape before covering it with the Press and Seal. However, I did not do a lot of buildup for the lips, just enough to show their placement. Over different projects I planned to use different expressions, so I only wanted to have a slight hint of them for placement purposes.
When covering with the Press and Seal, it is important to have all of the strips overlap in order to keep out moisture. The product stays in place well. Most of the time I can leave the film on the mold and use it a second time before I have to remove and replace it.
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