Welcome!
January 19th, 2010
The Papier Mache Nightmare 2009
November 10th, 2009
Photos of The Papier Mache Nightmare 2009 can be found here or on flickr if you prefer.
The Papier Mache Nightmare 2009
October 22nd, 2009
This year’s construction of our annual Halloween display called “The Papier Mache Nightmare” is behind schedule (as always it seems) due to a very busy last couple of months.
To everyone that has sent me questions via email please know that I am working on getting them answered and those of you that took time to send me nice comments please know that they were greatly appreciated.
Currently I’m hoping to finish all of my prop building by this weekend and the display is scheduled to be up on Friday, October 30th and Saturday, October 31st.
In the works are two large five foot Dungeon Rats named “Riff” and “Raff”, eight new pumpkins featuring some new techniques, cemetery columns and fence plus my modified Sentinels.
Things are progressing, look for photos of this year’s display and new tutorials sometime in November, until then please have a safe and fantastic Halloween 2009!
Frequently Asked Questions
September 8th, 2009
September is prop building season and with that comes a lot of email and questions. Thank you for all the nice comments and questions, I do my best to respond to everybody but during the next two months my schedule is very hectic and sometimes I miss an email.
I love questions and if you have a unique question it will probably be answered on my other blog called Scotty Art. Take a moment to browse that site and see if the question has already been asked. Frequently asked questions include:
“How do you make paste?”
“How do you make clay?”
“How do you weatherproof or waterproof?”
“How do you make templates?”
The answers to all of these questions are supplied in The Basics section on this site which goes into detail about my paste and clay recipes, weatherproofing and making templates, please read the information because chances are your question has already been answered.
September Work in Progress
September 8th, 2009
If you’ve read through the majority of projects on this site then you know that one of my favorite places on the internet is The Mad Lab, a site that hosts monthly prop building contests. The Mad Lab has motivated me to create many of my more popular pieces; the pumpkins, gargoyle, busts and sentinels to name a few.
This summer has flown by and except for teaching some papier mache workshopsI haven’t really created anything new, but after reading about this month’s contest which requires you to build a ghoulish prop using paint containers (plastic, metal, 1 gallon, 5 gallon, etc.) I found the inspiration and motivation I needed.
The pieces I’m working on for the contest are something I’ve never created and proving to be a challenge.
Here’s a couple of teaser pictures, enjoy!
Gargoyle 360
August 25th, 2009
Created some animated GIF’s showing some of my props in a full 360 degree view.
The animation was accomplished by photographing the props 36 times, rotating the prop 10 degrees for each photo. Photoshop was used to animate the images into the spinning 360 view.
Click here to view more prop 360’s.
80 Days . . .
August 13th, 2009
Eighty days until Halloween.
Do you know where your props are?
My new props for the year are still resigned to a piece of paper, scratchy doodles and rambling images swimming around my mind.
The ideas and concepts are solid but the actual physical realization of these new creations has yet to be started.
Same story every year, its August and nothing to show, but hey, I’ve still got September and October.
The List
August 8th, 2009
Today is August 7th, 2009 and I have finally compiled my list of projects I hope to get completed before October 31st.
The list is ambitious and contains a few new props that will hopefully take me outside my comfort zone.
I realize it’s not possible to read the actual list of props but I think some things are better left shrouded in mystery.
Halloween is only 84 days away and the details of the list will be unveiled at that time.
Tombstone Study
August 4th, 2009
We visited an older cemetery located in Osceola County Michigan this past weekend.
The cemetery had an interesting collection of tombstones but the thing that really stood out was the amount of lichen and moss covering the majority of the markers.
The gallery of photographs should be useful for anyone interested in achieving an interesting and organic texture or paint scheme for their tombstone props.
View the gallery.
Workshop Galleries
July 28th, 2009
Over the past year I have taught six papier mache workshops at Space Studios, a local art gallery/pottery studio located in Midland, MI.
The workshops have featured dragons, frogs, gargoyles and pumpkins. Forty three students have attended the workshops and I have logged over 70 hours of teaching experience. The workshops have consumed hundreds of pounds of four, hundreds of hot glue sticks, countless rolls of masking tape and many pounds of recycled newspaper.
The best thing about teaching workshops besides the chance to play with papier mache is the chance to meet a variety of creative and talented people. Most folks attending the workshops had not worked with papier mache since their elementary school days and the classes showed them all the wonders possible with papier mache.
Here are some photographs from the past workshops:
If you are curious as to some of the work involved in teaching these classes click here.