I’ve been working on my second shrunken head, and have been trying to improve my wrinkle work. They’re not brilliant but they’re better than attempts that I’ve made on sculptures in the past. From a distance I think they look pretty cool, zoomed in they look terrible!

The aim of these things is to feature as pretend museum artefacts at a Halloween event, so there’s a strange sort of balance between wanting to be vaguely accurate enough for the object to be convincing (though I know they will need some generous suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience), and being a fun over-the-top prop made by someone without a huge amount of experience.

It makes me wonder if people’s home-made Halloween props and Christmas decorations are where you find the folk art of the modern era?