Gravedigger's Head Complete!

I pushed on like a good haunter should and finished up the head of Madog. Oh, I may go back and add some additional small details, maybe a little more hair here and there, but in the main he is done. Now on to the body!

Before adding the hair, I added some facial details. I gave his cheeks some spider veins and some freckles/age spots. Then in the areas I wanted deeper shadows, such as around his eyes and in the crags of his jowls I used a slightly watered down brown paint. I then watered it down some more to hide the edges so he didn't look like a linebacker with dark streaks under his eyes.

Then I went a used a barely watered down brown wash and covered the entire head with it, using an old sheet to wipe off the excess. That's what you see above.

Next it was time to add hair. Using the braid I bought, I cut off small snippets of it, about a half-inch in length and used contact cement to glue them to the brows.

My goal had been to use an electric razor to shave them down so they weren't so bushy, but before that I wanted to blow off the excess hairs. I turned on my heat gun and blew them off, but in the process I also melted the hair. Girls, if you're buying your extensions at the dollar store, be careful! I didn't have to apply much heat at all to have them melt. Fortunately, I liked the effect.

Next I added sideburns, slowly overlapping each row to try and achieve full coverage.

I then used the heat gun to "trim" them.

I then did a similar process for the hair on his head, but left him balding on top since my yard display will be a 12th century monastery.

Once melted into shape he was essentially done. On the HauntForum discussion board, RoxyBlue made the comment that for an old guy with such black hair, he must be getting it out of a bottle! Good point! So I greyed the hair a little and this is what we have.

I'll probably work on my cemetery columns next before moving on to his body, but both might need to wait until I finish my basement laundry room.

Madog's the Dog!

I feel like I'm closing in on the completion of my gravedigger's head. Detailing still needs to be done -- coloring of the face, hair, eyebrows, sideburns -- but the head itself is completed. Below will be a longish set of pictures that updates the progress I've made to date, such as adding the eyes and painting.

When we left, Madog was pretty much looking like this:

I used two "sticky eyes" I got from Wal-Mart a couple of year's ago and set them into the sockets:

Using the cloth mache technique I learned from Dan Reeder (The Monster Man), I cut up four pieces of cotton sheet into small squares to form the upper and lower eyelids. Dipping them in my "pancake batter" mache paste I wrapped them around the eye. 

If you look at an eye, the upper lid tends to overlap the lower lid at the corners so start with the lower lid first. Despite the fact that the picture below shows my placing the upper lid first, I subsequently removed it and put the lower lid in first. You can see the overlap in the subsequent pictures.

They were then covered with Monster Mud and allowed to dry.

To begin the painting process, I first covered the head with a protective layer of spar varnish. Interestingly, it makes the Monster Mud feel like clay. Once it was dry, though, I covered it with a layer of primer.

Below is a completely unnecessary dark base coat I applied. I'm not quite sure where I was going with this, probably thinking of dry brushing or something, but I guess it provides another layer of protection for the mache and clay beneath.

I then applied three coats of a flesh tone paint.

The next step will be adding hair. I went to my local dollar store and picked up this "jumbo" braid (for $1.29!) which I'll use to add the various hair features. But first I'll need to add some further details to the flesh with paint.

Then it's just a matter of constructing the body. Well, if that's all there is.

Madog Update

I've continued working on my gravedigger prop, Madog of the Dead, and for my first attempt at this I'm pleased with how it's turning out. After covering the entire mache head with the paper clay and allowing it to dry, I wasn't particularly keen on the lumpiness of it. As I mentioned previously, creating a smoother mix to start with will help it out, but I've found that after applying the current clay, if I brush water over it and tap it with my fingers I can smooth out a lot of the lumps.

When the paper clay dries, it is very hard (and heavy!) and though it's possible to sand, it's not the easiest to do so, and I didn't want to create a dust storm with a Dremel. So I figured I could create a smoother texture by applying a layer of Monster Mud to it. The first layer did do just that, but a second one refined it some more. I'm still debating whether to apply a third one (all of them are relatively thin), but I'm thinking I'll sand it down lightly after the second layer dries and see how that looks (so much for not creating a lot of dust). I'm guessing it will be sufficient, though. I also figure it provides a layer of protection to the paper clay underneath, though it will eventually receive a waterproofing coat at the end.

Here are some progress update pictures.

Fully covered in paper clay

With one coat of Monster Mud

And after a second coat

I didn't worry so much about the neck since a lot of it will hidden in the folds of his clothes, and a "turkey neck" looks appropriate on an old geezer who's spent a lifetime digging graves. After he's sanded (hopefully) smooth, I'll work on the eyes and ears.

Sculpting Update

Well, because I'm impatient I just wanted to dive right in to my "sculpting" so, let the consistency be damned, I used the paper clay I had on hand. I'm not unhappy with the result, though unlike Lauriebeast I didn't just pick up clay one day and suddenly discover I could create the Bride of Frankenstein. Still, with refinements and painting, it may be good enough to put out into the yard display and not have to hide it under low-light conditions.

Anyway, here are a couple of progress pictures.

The paper mache base skull with a cardboard tube neck, also mached.

After applying some of the facial features.

While the eye sockets look really large and wide here, they don't seem so big in person. And actually, I'll be adding more clay to the face to create a more saggy skin look and to achieve heavy-bagged eyes. Had to stop here, though, because the wife wanted to have a dinner-and-a-movie night with me. Damn, woman! You're interfering in the creation of art!

A Pound of Flesh

Or clay. Having seen such awesome sculpts from such artists as Dead Spider, Lauriebeast, and Terra (what's up with women having an excess of kickass sculpting skills?), I thought I'd try my hand at sculpting the head of my new prop I'm building, my yard display's gravedigger. Every cemetery needs someone to dig the graves and I've had to do the work up till now. So I'm hiring someone to take over for me.

My original inspiration was Spider's Hemlock Densch, but I've seen quite a few characters now that have me casting about for my own character. I don't typically name my props as some do, but when he filled out his application for the gravedigger job, he wrote in Madog of the Dead so I guess I have to call him that.

My goal is to slowly turn my yard display into a Medieval church walk-thru. It's a multi-year project, if for no other reason that I work slow despite having tons of ideas. I like reading about other haunter's projects almost as much as I enjoy building my own so I find ways to waste enormous amounts of time.

Madog, by the way, was a Welsh prince said to have sailed to North America in 1170, thus predating Columbus's own journey by 300 years. There's actually a long tradition of "Welsh Indians," and some structures and ruins that were found in the New World and dated to well before the white man was known to have arrived, are attributed to them. I think there was a History Channel program about them. Maybe it was the SciFi channel (nope, still won't call it the SyFy channel).

For my purposes, Madog was also a riverman in the Brother Cadfael mystery series by Ellis Peters (like Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, Derek Jacobi is Cadfael in my head. Okay, Basil Rathbone could work as Holmes -- I liked his hard-drinking, chain-smoking style, but Robert Downey Jr. was just God awful!). Madog's job was to fish the dead out of the River Severen whenever someone fell in and drowned. Since I don't have a river in my yard -- and don't plan on digging out a channel for one (even for Halloween!) anytime soon -- Madog will have to be a gravedigger.

The difference between what I'm creating and what others have done before -- aside from their creations being awesome and mine likely sucking -- is that I actually won't be using modeling clay or similar media. I'm going to try and use a homemade paper clay recipe, the shredded newspaper used for blown insulation popularized by Stolloween.

I've been slowly adopting that to different skulls I've been creating to make certain features more prominent,  and figure I'd like to go a step further and see if I have any skill to use it for an actual sculpt. One of the challenges I've found previously, however, is the pulp clay I've been using thus far had a lumpy texture to it so I'm going to have to smooth out the mixture a lot more before it will be ready to use for features. Should be fun, though.

Now, you may be thinking  I have some form of ADD since my last post was about building entrance columns to my cemetery, and since it took me a little while to make two sides before I stopped and I haven't posted any update pictures since, the likelihood of them being finished is pretty slim. Well you'd be right (about them not being finished, anyway). Perhaps it is an attention deficit I suffer from, but also a groundswell of laziness too. I just don't feel like running to the Home Depot at the moment to buy the wood I need to complete the job. So why not start a new project?!

Having a couple of projects going at the same time though saves me from getting too bored with any one. But tomorrow I will be making the Depot run. Since I'll also be needing to buy lumber to finish my basement (see, not just laziness or ADD), throwing an extra board or two on the lumber cart for the columns will save me from making a special trip. Now whether I add a couple of lengths of PVC for Madog's body I haven't yet decided, because I might just craft that out of lumber too.

So far I've made my paper mache head that I'll use as a base and will be fiddling with the clay mixture today to begin the sculpt. I'll post some pictures when I have anything of substance to shop. That way I'll have a portfolio full of half-started projects but none completed!