How I made a statue

One of the props I made for a local production of Annie was a bust statue thing for Warbuck's house to make it look fancy.

The bust started off as a polystyrene head. I kinda miss having this guy around.

Then I stuck the head to a box and added cardboard for the shoulders.

I covered the whole thing in newspaper, papier mache style.

I had a bit of trouble making the bust white.

First I did two coats of white poster paint but they weren't doing much to cover up the newspaper.

Then I covered it in two layers of white tissue paper which was a little better.

Then I sponged on a couple of layers of grey paint which worked ok.

Some newspaper could still be seen but from a distance it was fine, and since the audience of the play wouldn't see the bust up close that was ok.

I painted on some darker grey to define the features and then he was done.

He nailed his performance in Annie.