I look at husband and say

"I can't carve a face...can you carve a face?"

"No." (Darn I was hoping he had been hiding his sculpting talent from me all these years!)

Husband foolishly asks "if I can live with it the way it is?"

I married him for his amazing sense of humor :D

-------------------------------

Well, this sucks....how about if we take a foam wig head, buy the expensive expanding foam and cast it a few times until we get something that is twice the size and has a face.

Cool! We order a male wig head.....but then I find the cost for the expanding foam...ouch, you have got to be kidding....really, that is really expensive? I bet we could have artist carve us a head out of foam for less than that.

Just an note that just like our talented Dan who thinks that rare earth magnets can solve any problem....husband feels the same way about Smooth On products.....the answer to most life's mysteries lies in their catalog. :D

So, we go back and forth on this for a while and then one of our very talented friends - Scott, AKA Extremo the Clown - who is friends with the artist that did the new video for the talking head, stops by to chat.


He is a very talented artist and sculptor, so we tell him or our dilemma and see if he has a solution.


We hook up the video projector and show him what our problem is......He says "Do you have some clay?"

You have never seen frog queen and husband move so fast to find our box of modeling clay. :D


We bring it to him like an offering and he starts working. As we see what he is up to we feel really, really stupid.

We really should have thought of this......

The great thing about Scott is that he is one of the most generous and supportive artist we know. Not only is he making the face for us, but he is explaining how he is doing it and how easy it will be for us to do. Super cool guy!

And...since we like sharing too - here is the super simple way to make a face on a flat surface

Just project the face that you are wanting to match to on the surface you want to "carve" the face. Watch where the primary facial features land on the surface, nose, eyes and lips.

Take some clay and start with the nose. Just put clay on the surface where the nose is showing up from the projector and smooth out a simple nose that is the shape of the person in the video.

Do the same for the lips - make them similar to the shape of the person in the video. Even if the lips are mostly moving...just shape out a non smiling mouth.

For the eyes, he suggests that you start with the eyebrows, shape those and then build up the around the eye area to create the socket space for the eyes.

That is is. I am not over simplifying it....it is really that easy - took him less than 10 minutes.

Sorry, no pictures, I was in too much awe watching him to grab the camera :)

Then if you are Scott, you put that cute little curly thing at the top of the head :D If you have seen his work, you would understand. :)

Then, since we could not leave the clay on the face, husband cast a one time use (cheap) plaster of paris mold of the front of the head where he molded the face. Then he poured a copy from expanding foam. Broke the mold to get it out and then cut the "alien" head down and glued the cast face on.

You can also (and likely what we will do next time) is use the air dry crayola clay to shape the features and just leave it on the face and then cover over it. That will eliminate having to make a mold.

I then took texture paint and painted the whole thing to cover up the seams. The texture paint also helps with the project as that the smooth marble like surface shows flaws and makes it very obvious when the face does not line up correctly.

Having features on the bust not only keeps it from looking like an alien, but it makes the video projection look great on the bust even from the side. You can really tell here how molding the face to match the actor makes a huge difference.

Frog Queen....did you skip something....did that video appear out of thin air?

Oh, yeah, I will ask husband for help on explaining that one......check back soon.

One last picture....here is one of Scott's "art cars" - he parked it in our driveway one Halloween, that face on the back is a fountain that he filled with red water just for us. I told you he was a cool guy.