Zombie Bust by Moses Jaen

Here's a recently completed zombie bust I picked up on eBay. The gruesome sculpt is by Moses Jaen who seems to specialize in this area of the horror genre and does it quite well I might add. If you'd like to see more of his work, click on this link: https://mochiindesigns.carbonmade.com/projects/2183783

The life size (ya!) bust has three parts, the head itself, a wooden stake (of sorts) that it is mounted (impaled) upon and the base. I particularly liked the base because of the added detail of a spent cartridge casing and a recently detached thumb.

After washing the parts in a mild soap solution to get rid of any mold release residue, I somewhat followed the image of the completed bust on eBay to determine my color palette although I colored shifted it a bit more to the red end of the spectrum. I spent a lot of time on the 'undamaged' skin on the skull by using light washes of brick red and medium browns along with several faint blue coarse lines to suggest veins.

The single eye is actually a 12mm gray doll eye iris/pupil I had in my stash which I gave a heavy coat of white Elmer's glue to suggest the presence of a cataract. Finally, I went over the whole piece with a clear gloss acrylic in the areas that I wished to get a wet look. I left the zombie's skin flat for the most part.

The base was a pretty simple affair to paint with an overall coating of dark brown, brass for the shell casing and flesh and gore for the severed thumb. In something of a departure of what I usually do, I decided to have blood dripping down the side of the base instead of a black edging.

This was a fun bust to put together with ZERO clean up required which was a pleasant change from what I have been encountering on my other builds. Recommended. 2/2/2018