Life Sized Cast Concrete Zombie Yard Art

I was playing around with some Chang Shapecrete the other day when my buddy suggested using some heavy rubber gloves as a mold. I decided to combine it with a commercial mold of a man's dace to create a cool zombie clawing his way out of the grave. Here's how-

Step 1: Casting the Hands

I used rubber cleaning gloves to cast the hands. I stretched the open end of the glove over a scrap piece of PVC pipe to make pouring the concrete easier. I mixed up a couple of quarts of Chang Shapecrete and filled the gloves. I hung them by the cuffs with heavy-duty spring clamps and left them overnight to harden. The next day I carefully cut off the gloves with a razor knife.

Step 2: Casting the Face

I used a commercial mold to cast the zombie's face. I set the mold up on blacks and sprayed it with cooking spray so the hardened face would come out of the mold easily. When the concrete was hard I removed it from the mold and cleaned the residual cooking spray off of it.

If you don't have a mold you could cast a face from a plastic Halloween mask or even make a cast of your own face with plaster and use that as a mold. Another method is to gently press aluminum foil over your or someone'sfacial features to create a mold and then gently work it into a tray of sand. The sand will support the foil and provide a mold for the concrete. Use extra cooking spray as the nooks and crannies of the foil will make it harder to remove. This methos is much harder to clean but it does give the final product a crackled surface which may look kinda cool for a zombie. Play around and experiment.

Step 3: Painting

I used Rustoleum spray paints to finish my zombie. I used eden green, hunter green, khaki, claret wine and flat black.See the pics above to see how I used the paint to create highlights.

Step 4: Give Your Yard Some Class With the Undead

I put the zombie in the garden with his hands clawing out of the dirt. It blends into the greenery so it's very subtle. Add a little Halloween to your life year-round with a cast concrete zombie!