Though this Treebeard isn’t carrying around two hobbits, he still looks a lot like the character from The Lord of the Rings. Instructables user fasaxc made the costume over a weekend for Halloween. Just look at those realistic eyes! He invested most of his time into constructing the head and like the rest of the costume, the base of the tree top is cardboard. He also used Gesso, acrylic paint, wire mesh, and air dry clay. Some details on the paint job for the head:
The head got three layers of paint and some details:
One layer of gesso, which is a white primer. If I had a do-over, I’d mix in some black paint so that I was starting with a grey base. That way, little nicks in the upper layers wouldn’t show up as much.
One layer of reddish-brown.
One layer of greenish-grey, applied with a fairly dry brush. It lets the brown show through in cracks and crevices, which is what we want.
For the details, I added highlights and lowlights using dark and light versions of the above paint. I actually dropped blobs and white and black into my mixing bowl and only partially mixed them. That way, I could pick up a bit of dark or light on each trip to the bowl.
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