Audrey II (large) Part II

Today was the big push to get the large Audrey II to completion. I'm going to call it a win for today, as we got much closer to done than I anticipated. Part of this was due to the fact that there was no wrestling of chickenwire this time, and much less reinventing of the wheel (or in our case, inventingthe wheel). It was pretty much a straight up paper mache extravaganza, broken up by rest breaks and waiting for things to dry.

One of the important things we figured out was to always keep in mind perspective and which section of the jaw/mouth/piece was facing us. To that end, there were several times where we propped up the upper jaw (U) on top of the lower (L) so we could have a general idea of the final picture.

To the left is (U) before we started paper mache of the underside, but with the teeth stuck in--we stuck them through the chickenwire, then duct taped them in place, trying to make sure they were semi-snaggle toothed.

Before anything else, we built up the lip on the edge of the mouth, rolling up newspaper and taping it all around the edge of the jaw. We paper mached over the edges, and through the teeth, using smaller strips than on the dome.

We waited a bit until the first one had dried, then went forward with the large green tissue paper sheets for the outside. We wetted everything down with the paste, then laid down the tissue paper, gently brushing (cause tissue paper tears if you look at it wrong) on more glue onto the top.

Once one of these had dried sufficiently, we flipped it, and I spray painted the teeth white.

Sarah sadly had to leave at this point. I ended up pushing through and finishing up the lip. I also spray painted the inside of the mouth white so that the newspaper print wouldn't show through.

Still to do: spray painting the mouth red, painting the tongue...and assembly. But coming along nicely:)

**UPDATE** Apparently I am susceptible to demon possession. Nothing else really explains why my body sat itself up from the comfy chair I had collapsed in and walked itself back out to the garage to work on the interiors. It was actually fairly non-traumatic, only took another hour or so. I first made these white tubes to put around the teeth to make sure that the red paint didn't get on them--they worked out awesome. They allowed me to get close to the gums without worrying about painting the teeth or getting flecks of red on them. Spray painted red, going for max coverage, focusing on the teeth, and working my way from the snout to back of the throat (in case I ran out of paint).

Towards the back of the throat, because I was running low on the red, I took some brown gloss and did some spots of brown on top of a light layer of red. Then took a crumpled up newspaper and patted it a bit to give it some texture. Turned out fairly well. I then took the brown and, aiming from the back to the front, lightly sprayed a mist of brown, just to give it a little depth. Probably not going to be visible in the night, but it looks mildly more artistic. And because I was at the end of the red can anyways, I opted to just finish and spray paint the tongue. Still intending to go back over it with some paint and do veins or...something. Not sure what exactly, but will attempt to get more detailed. Otherwise, it could be ready now--the expanding foam made it super creepy looking.