The Hand of Glory - Part 2

The hand of Glory is finally finished, looking all pretty in its shadow box, and ready to... hang! (BWAHAHAHAHA! HANG! like, it's already been hung? y'know, hand of a hangman? no? someone?)

If you stumbled here first, I strongly recommend you to read Part 1 of this tutorial, 'cause we're jumping to the finishing touches right after the break!

The Hand of Glory - part One

In the good old days where you could be accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake for the simple act of living past 40 years old (Caveat Lector! I may or may not be making this up.), the european continent was riddled with strange and creepy beliefs.

One of those was the Hand of Glory; the mummified hand of a criminal who died at the gallows. It was believed that lighting a candle, made from the fat of the same man, or each individual finger, depending to whom you ask, would plunge a whole household in a deep sleep, which would last until the flame had been snuffed, either with blood or milk.

This made the Hand of Glory the perfect tool for burglars and other sly folks with crime on their minds.

Following the reading of this post by the good spirit behind Propnomicon (Is it a man? a woman? an unspeakable horror? who knows!), I decided to make myself a mummified hand. Not only that, I was also going to make it with some ghetto-ass materials.

A few good heads

I've been cranking out a nice big batch of shrunken heads these last few days and thought I'd share that happy little family with you! Look at them right after the jump.

Tsantsa: the finishing touches

Well, hello again to the three people who still read this blog!

Today, we will start where we left yesterday, and transform the yellowish latex skin into someting worthy of being called a shrunken head. If you just stumbled upon this one blog post, I strongly recommend reading Part One first.

If you're too artistically challenged to sculpt a head and would like to try your hand at painting & decorating one, or if you just have trouble finding the necessary materials, I may be able to sell you a blank latex copy; contact me if you're interested and I'll try to work something out.

Now, onto the "tutorial"!

The Creation of a Tsantsa

Oh boy, long time no see!

I hope life is treating you fine.
First, let me put you in context; a little while ago, I was chatting with my fellow performer and great friend Daniel while preparing our duo's show for the St-Jean-Baptiste's eve in Chibougamau. We were talking about things we would like to implement in the show, and handmade goods we might want to sell later on, because T-Shirts are nice, but sometimes they just don't cut it.

Daniel had enjoyed Steve and thought it might be nice to have our own little creepy head hunter stand from which sell shrunken heads. Now, Steve was mostly an experiment which somewhat failed as much as I'm concerned, and his mold was a wreck, so I decided to start from scratch, make a better sculpt, a better mold,  and work on making the finishing of that thing as fast and good looking as possible, while keeping the costs down. I've worked it out, and now I'll let you know what I did, in a tutorial more explicit than the first one. (I took pictures this time! yay!)

So, here we go, after the jump!

The Amazing Feejee Mermaid! (From Borneo.)

Here's a picture of the finished product.
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

If you ever try to follow my instructions and make your own mermaid, please let me know! I'd love to see what I managed to inspire!

For those who landed directly on this post, here's links to the whole tutorial:

Part 1: In which we discuss the flaying of the fish
Part 2: In which we discuss the mounting of the skin
Part 3: In preparation for the application of skin
Part 4: In which we add flesh to the beast
Part 5: In which we finish the job

Here's also a link to a tutorial on how to make the manuscript you see on the left of the picture

If you enjoyed this, please let me know!

Cheers

Taxidermy: In which we add flesh to the beast

Greetings, one and all! We are getting close, dangerously close, to completing the amazing feejee mermaid. This time, we'll see how one can apply a realistic, strong skin to the upper body to make it look like the dessicated flesh of a mummified corpse.

This part is my favorite. It's fun and messy, and doesn't require much talent nor concentration; it's impossible to make it look bad.

To add flesh and skin to some bone or armature, I like to use a combination of materials to achieve maximum strength and realism. For large areas, it's simply a matter of layering. For highly detailed zones, such as the hands or face, it's almost like sculpting with papier mâché.

Read the full tutorial with pictures after the jump.

Fairy corpse tutorial

The always interesting Cobwebs at Shadowmanor recently posted a great, fun tutorial on how to create a mummified fairy corpse using a twist on basic corpsing techniques (techniques that I shall soon cover in depth for your instruction and enjoyement).

The results, as you can see, are great, the tutorial is easy to follow, and it'll look terribly good in your wunderkammer!

go take a look HERE!

Tsantsa; from clay to shrunken head

I love shrunken heads. I really do. These little guys are creepy, look great, and have that mysterious tribal vibe to them. And let's face it, they are damn cute. And after reading my 1925 copy of Up de Graff's Head Hunters of the Amazon, I decided I just HAD to have one.

Of course, buying a real shrunken head is out of my price range, but I wanted my own little tsantsa, and there is no better way to get something than to make it yourself.

Using sulfur-free oil based clay, I had a blast sculpting this little guy over a few hours. I won't go into details with the sculpting process; with a little bit of artistic talent, it's quite easy to do. The sculpture done, a mold must be made. It shalt be made out of plaster, said I!



I made a dividing wall with thin aluminum pieces (the bottom of a pie plate), and covered the head with plaster and strips of burlap. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of this process, so you'll have to imagine. I then sloshed some liquid latex inside the mold, following by the lengthy process of letting it cure, then removed and powdered the latex cast with baby powder.

I gave back a little color and tackiness to the skin using brown and orange grease makeup (applied thinly so that the wrinkles and pores aren't filled out), and following the information I had about the methods used to make shrunken heads, I blackened the head with charcoal.

I then applied a good layer of fixative. I personally like to use ultra-strong TRESemmé hairpsray. Following this, I sewed the lips and the back of the head shut with thin cotton rope, which I dyed a yellowish brown with coffee earlier.



I still have to decorate it a bit more and find a way to put hair on it (punching hair into slip latex is quite difficult; I'll have to find another solution)

However, I'm quite happy with how it looks like right now! It was quite a simple process, with plenty of info that can be found online, but if you want to try something similar and need any help, advice is just a comment or an email away!

Here is a great website about shrunken heads

and on here you'll find a friendly community willing to answer most of your questions about molding and casting latex props