HALLOWEEN!!! My favorite holiday! I love the festivities revolving around this time of year. Haunted houses, corn mazes, costume partys, dressing up like a (whatever you are) and free CANDY! from strangers. . .

One thing I don't like is all the price tags on cheaply made flimsy decorations that don't even look that great. The ones that have any amount of detail are far beyond anything I would like to spend for the product. I often find myself looking at things in the Halloween stores saying "I could make that for way less, and even better." I have accumulated alot of decorations over the years (and broken more that end up in a midden heap somewhere)

I decided to put my talents to use on a Styrofoam manneqiun head this year instead of carving some pumpkins. . . well I'll probably still do that too but ehh whatever. Anyway let me show you how I turned a cheap chunk of Styrofoam into something creatively creepy.

Step 1: Materials and Tools

Materials:
•Manneqiun head
•Acrylic paint
Tools:
•Razor blade
•Paint brush
•Marker

Step 2: Vision and Planning

Like all projects you need to think about what you would like to accomplish. Looking at the head I visualized what kind of things I could do. I decided to go with a zombieish look. Outline any changes that you would like to make to the shape of it.

Step 3: Cut and Shape

Being that I had decided to have a partially exposed skull look to it I began to cut peices out and sculp the skull from the foam. The "skin edge" outline was given depth by cutting the line with the razorblade and pressing firmly on the skull side of the line until the foam remained compressed enough for a bit of depth.

Step 4: The Skull

Paint the base color onto the skull. I painted it yellow as a base. It would have been more realistic to go more beige.

Using a partially dry brush of black or brown "dinge" the skull by dabbing at it.

Add black into the eye socket, missing teeth, and any lines that you would like to show.

Step 5: The Face

Think about layers. All good makeup effects are multiple layers.

Dab purple, blue, green and yellow around tears and impact areas or lesions.

Think bruising as you do this. Paint a flesh tone over this and define any edges that you want with black. Paint outlines of eyes and eyebrows.

Step 6: Details

Pretty much all of the colors added (with the exception of the eye) are dabbed on with a dryish brush one color layer at a time. Mix little bits of other colors into your solid colors to give them more character. Use black to make your colors more dingey. When making blood mix browns for more of a dried look, a little bit of blue will give it a darker more blood like look.

For the eye use a beigeish yellowed white for more of a jaundiced look. If you draw a low upper eyelid that covers part of the iris it can give it a lazy listless look. Use a toothpick to draw in red veins to make it look bloodshot. I did not put a pupil as I wanted more of a cataract look.

Tip: Spray paint will eat Styrofoam. this can be used to get cool effects if you wish to splatter it a bit.

Step 7: Final

The great thing about zombies is the worse they look the better it looks. . . If that makes any sense. . . Once you are satisfied with the product sit back let it dry and admire. You can add a wig and matte the hair if you like. Plant the head in your garden, put it on a dummy in a chair on your porch, place in a window, the posibilities are only limited by your imagination. I put mine into a bush in my yard with some foam skulls to make it look like "The Ruins" vine.