I find myself doing a lot of screwy things in the name of “that might be fun” and this is one of them. I wander thrift shops looking for statues, heads on pedestals, and cast animals that I add to my stuff-to-draw collection and I was in the process of doing just that when I came across a plaster cast of a head. This particular head is part of a product line produced by someone, somewhere and they pop up once in a while around here. I’ve had opportunity to draw a couple of them. They’re all about 6″ tall and meant to hang on a wall. Wish I could find more of them.

This particular example was pretty beat up with lots of scrapes, scratches and some chunks of plaster missing, most notably the tip of the guy’s nose. The price was $2 and I decided to see if I could restore it, at least to the point where I could draw it. It took far more time than it was worth to do it but it was fun and the results are acceptable to me.

I started by using a spackling compound to fill and/or build up the missing parts. I’m not sure that was a good choice but it was what I had. Then I got out a very cheap set of acrylics and went to work with a small brush. I don’t know why I have the acrylics as I’ve never used them for painting. The only tubes that had been touched were Burnt Umber and Black. My guess is that they came from Walmart (grin). But they worked ok.

One thing I learned is that a camera finds every tiny and sub-tiny white speck. I’d feel I was done and I’d take a photo only to find lots and lots of little white specks, particularly in the guy’s beard. It was hard to see them to fix them and eventually I gave up. Hope you find it satisfactory.