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!

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