Creating a papier mache head of Felix Morton

Step 4 Painting on the basic colours

With the structure finished, I first applied the primer paint to give it an overall white base on which to paint the colours. I highly recommend doing this to prevent the newspaper content from showing through the coloured paint. This also helps to seal the papier mache layers. The primer paint dried incredibly quickly so next up was the colours.

I had purchased just two acrylic paints: Pale Umber and Burnt Umber. The pale umber was just right for Mr Morton's skin colour, a sort of dull pinky grey, while the sample guide in the shop showed that the Burt Umber could be mixed with water to make a lighter brown for his hair.

In practice, I wasn't able to get a satisfactory hair colour. I think I used too much water and, although the hair originally looked more orange which was appropriate since Mr Morton has streaks of highlights, further application of the paint just made it darker. I tried mixing both paints but that didn't look good either, so in the end I went with the Burnt Umber as-is, then applied lighter browns along the tops of his hair. I also painted his beard and found masking tape useful to get nice edges. Like the Primer, the acrylic paints dried very quickly.