Make Fake Flesh - great for Halloween!

Fake Severed Flesh with Tattoos!

Hello one and all, and welcome to another blog post by Zoe.

Want some gory flesh to accessorise that house party or outfit this Halloween?  then you're in the right place!

I will be showing you how to make a nasty piece of tattooed flesh out of transparent silicon, yay!

To start you will need to get some medium chavant.  (This is basically a type of sculpting plasticine) you can get this from Alec Tiranti’s in the UK or any other good specialist art supplier.

Once you have softened your chavant, start to mould it into a jagged flesh shape.  You can even use part of your own body to mould it on to pick up the skin texture.  This piece was moulded on my wrist!

Once you are happy with your shape and texture, using oil paints, start to mix up a flesh colour.  The key thing to remember here at this stage is DO NOT add in any white or black pigments, as this will ruin the transparency of the silicon.  That layer will come later.

The best way to mix up a Caucasian flesh colour is red, brown and yellow. Sometimes a small hint of blue or green gives it an added dimension, you just need to play around to get it right! Darker skin just needs a different blend, experiment first to get it right.

To check the colour get some white spirit and add a small amount of your mixed colour into it.  This should then give you an idea about what it will look like in the silicon.

Next we get out the silicon!  The stuff I have used is also from Alec Tiranti’s, and it’s transparent moulding silicon with a mix ratio of 20 to 1.  

It helps to have some disposable gloves, cups and a set of digital scales at this point as well as it gets very messy!

Weigh out the exact amount of silicon you think you need.  Use your artistic judgement here depending on the size of the piece you are making.

Once weighed out start to mix in the colour you created earlier, adding only a very small bit at a time and trying to avoid any bubbles in your work. Always remember to mix in your colours first then add your catalyst as the silicon will start reacting as soon as the catalyst has been added giving you less working time!

Once you are happy with your colour, carefully paint a thin layer onto your chavant mold, and then allow to dry.  The drying time will vary depending on the amount of catalyst added and the room temperature.

Once it has dried you can then mix up a much smaller batch for the tattoo design.  My rough design is in black, blue and yellow, but you can take longer on it and choose what ever colours you like.  I also applied mine with a metal sculpting tool, however as I soon learnt, this was not the most accurate thing to use!

Once I had finished my design I then left it to dry.

When that layer had finally dried I then added the ‘flesh’ layer to my piece.  To do this I mixed up the rest of the transparent layer colour (the first colour mixed) in with some white.  I then added this to my silicon, and covered the whole back of the piece. I then again left it to dry.

After it was dry I added the final ‘gore’ layer.  To do this I mixed up some red silicon and added some thixotrope to it.  Thixotrope is an additive that really thickens the silicon, creating some nice fleshy lumps.  I then painted on the red silicon over parts of the back.  I then mixed up some darker red and some browns to create more depth, and proceeded to smear it around the back of the piece.

Once dried I slowly pealed it out of the mold and left it in a suitable place to try and scare my flat mate!

Once you have got the basics of the flesh silicon you can then start to make some more in depth body parts, like this hand and ear, both made up using a similar technique, only this time I used a mould of the original sculpt to create the final piece instead of just painting the silicon directly onto the chavant.