Creating a dragon skull

A while ago, I stumbled upon this thread on Haunt Forum, on how to make a dragon skull from a plastic bottle. I wanted to make one for Halloween, but I didn't have any time left. In April, there's another edition of Fantasy Fair in Holland, and my costume will include a skull-topped staff. More on the staff later, now I'm gonna make me a dragon skull!

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Creating a shrunken head, part 1

Something I have been planning to try for a long time is creating a shrunken head. When I first heard about these, I assumed it was just an urban legend, but later I found out these things are actually real. In the past, I have tried making them with paper maché and yarn, but these looked plain and simply ridiculous. But when I discovered this tutorial a while ago, I decided to give that a try.

The procedure is quite simple, actually. First, you create a head using oil based clay. Next, you create a plaster mold. The mold is filled with liquid latex and then emptied again, so the inside is covered by a thin skin of latex. This is repeated several times until the skin is thick enough. It is then removed from the mold and painted. This is, in fact, the same method that's also used to create latex masks!

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Pacman's evil twin brother

One of my stupid new years resolutions: draw more this year! I already got started last december, so I thought I would show off the result a bit. I wanted to start with something simple: Pacman's evil twin brother! The idea behind this is a version of Pacman with large fangs, and hooks that pull his lips back. No complicated shapes, and quite symmetrical.
I started out with a 2H mechanical pencil on bristol paper. I chose this kind of paper because I wanted to ink the drawing, and it's very smooth, perfect for pens. After the first sketch, I drew the final shapes with a 2B pencil. Here's what it looked like at that stage:

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The whisperer in darkness re-cover

After my first attempts at bookbinding, documented in this and this post, I decided it was time for another attempt! My first book didn't turn out so great. I made the hinge all wrong, and the book is almost impossible to open without tearing something. It would still make a fine prop for Halloween displays, so I'm not throwing it away.

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Necronomicon re-cover, part 2

In the previous post, the Necronomicon got a new cover. But the new cover is too boring. It's just a plain faux leather cover, it needs something extra! The Simon Necronomicon has this glyph on the cover that looks like a pentagram with some extra lines in it; I believe Vin Diesel had a tattoo of it in "Babylon AD". Since I'm too lazy to come up with something more original, I'm gonna put this glyph back on the cover. But I'm not too lazy to put some effort in it, so here we go!

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Necronomicon re-cover, part 1

Here's a project I have had in my mind for a long time, and now I finally started it. One of the blogs I follow, MRX Designs, has quite a few posts on bookbinding, more specifically on making new covers for books. I've been wanting to give it a try myself, so here we go.
There are two posts on the blog I mentioned that do a great job of explaining the entire process in detail: Demo Book #1 (part 1) and Demo Book #1 (part 2). A third one explains the process of creating a faux leather covering.

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Flashback: paper maché masks

These two masks were among my first creations ever. I made them for Halloween parties, but they were quite uncomfortable to wear.

The technique is pretty simple. You take a balloon, glue strips of newspaper over it and when the layer of paper maché is thick enough, you pop the balloon. This gives you a basic oval shape to work with. Of course, you have to make sure the shape is big enough to fit over your face!

Here's the first mask. I made it in 2010 as part of a costume for a Halloween party. The sawblade is made from a thick piece of cardboard, and the cuts are made with paper clay. Besides the saw blade, the most prominent feature was the eye, of course. It's a cheap plastic Christmas ball with paper mache glued over it.
The mask is painted with cheap gouache paint, wich wasn't the best idea since it's not waterproof. The hair is made from yarn, attached with hot glue.

The second mask was made the next year, for the same party. I managed to make the basic shape a lot smoother. The ears are made from cardboard and clay, with extra paper mache glued over it. The lips and eyes are also made like this. This time, I was smart enough to use acrylic paint instead of gouache. Overall, the paint job looks a lot better than on the first mask.

Masks like these have one huge disadvantage: they are impossible to wear for more than fifteen minutes. You breathe out straight into the mask, so in no time you sit in a hot, humid atmosphere that smells like whatever you had for dinner!

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