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The Horned God was a lot of fun to make. This is the work I love to do, all the sculptural elements and mixing various media in one form.
I started by completely changing the color of the base doll’s body. Oddly enough :) Tonner Dolls does not make a base form that is half grey-green and half bone-white (I can’t imagine why!). So after an extensive web search by Jamie and myself, we found a spray paint that was designed to bind with vinyl and used that to spray him the correct shades of life and death. Since I cant be around harsh chemicals, Jamie took that task on for me, bless her! It was worth the effort though. The doll’s skin is the same texture as those coming directly from the store, only in the colors he and I wanted!
Next up was a little more deconstruction. He lost both his right arm and right foot in quick succession, only to have them replaced with plastic skeleton versions (“borrowed” from a demonstration skeleton used by schools and doctor’s offices). Then I promptly lost his head. I kid you not. I lost his head. It had been removed back when I thought I was going to do a reroot on this particular base doll, and we left it off to do the spray paint job and then I set it aside to dry. And lost it. This apparently was all part of a plot on the part of the doll / god though. It forced me to stretch my wings as an artist and steal one last piece from the demo skeleton – its head, on to which I sculpted the gods face on only one side. Freaked my friends and family out the whole time I was working on him too!
To the “dead” torso I added a rib case in front and half of a spinal column in back all made from paper clay and painted with acrylic paints and sealed with a matte finish varnish.
After all the skeleton bits where assembled and the head constructed and attached, I wrapped his “dead” leg in soaking wet grey suede and bound it in place with cords over textural elements. Once the leather dried I added a few more layers of twisted leather to enhance the look I was going for, coated the whole thing with glue to make it thick, then when that dried, coated the leg in several layers of high gloss varnish. The end result gives the effect of mummification in a bog or dry cave. There is a sense that under the ripples of the contorted, and now shinny leather, you can feel the remaining bone of the dead man’s leg.
Next I started working on his more virile side. Yup he is anatomically correct, and … um… accurate shall we say… on each side of his pelvic region. I’ll let you figure out how that works.
His living side got a copper linen pant leg sewn on. Then I used green raw hide to wrap with Holly and Willow branches that I have been drying from Yule 2007 around the leg and up to his torso. In and around this I added flowers and greenery and finally lichen and stones. His living foot got an additional paint job to look more dirt covered, then stones glued over that, and finally copper threads were woven in to represent the thinnest of roots reaching down into the ground.
The skull on the living side was connected to the body with neck muscles naturally, so those had to be layered in just as the face muscles had been put in. Then to balance the weight of the ribcage I enhanced some of the muscle tone on the upper chest of the living side and smoothed all the edges down.
Next came paint work. I mixed up a close match grey-green paint to cover the sculptural elements on the living side and then went ahead and covered his whole torso in the new shade since he liked it so much. I added a multi-toned green dividing line between “life and death” instead of a blood red one, since as a god of vegetation I figured when he bled it was probably going to be closer to chlorophyll in color than hemoglobin. The final paint work for him was the spiral tattoos all along his arm and chest and one just over his eye, and of course the vibrant blue of his irises.
Possibly the scariest part of the god’s construction was his antlers. I had to punch holes into this lovely sculpted skull and then make the dang things not only stand up, but stay put! To say I procrastinated about that is to put it mildly. But eventually time and deadlines makes all of us, even me, jump off the cliff, and I put the holes in place. With that done, it was easy to commit to the rest.
The antlers themselves are modeled after those of the White Tailed deer and made on a wire armature covered with cloth and then paper clay and paint. On the “living” side I also garment weight suede to replicate the “velvet” that stags antlers carry in early spring. The antler on the “dead” side has already lost its velvet and so represents a later stage of the stag’s life cycle.
The final element is the God’s base which was made to represent a tree in both its fertile growth phase and its barren phase. At the center is the support rod wrapped in brown velvet that matches the velvet which covers the base itself. Part of the God’s belt includes a loop in the back that attaches to this rod for added support when being displayed.
Photos by Jamie Morgan
I started by completely changing the color of the base doll’s body. Oddly enough :) Tonner Dolls does not make a base form that is half grey-green and half bone-white (I can’t imagine why!). So after an extensive web search by Jamie and myself, we found a spray paint that was designed to bind with vinyl and used that to spray him the correct shades of life and death. Since I cant be around harsh chemicals, Jamie took that task on for me, bless her! It was worth the effort though. The doll’s skin is the same texture as those coming directly from the store, only in the colors he and I wanted!
Next up was a little more deconstruction. He lost both his right arm and right foot in quick succession, only to have them replaced with plastic skeleton versions (“borrowed” from a demonstration skeleton used by schools and doctor’s offices). Then I promptly lost his head. I kid you not. I lost his head. It had been removed back when I thought I was going to do a reroot on this particular base doll, and we left it off to do the spray paint job and then I set it aside to dry. And lost it. This apparently was all part of a plot on the part of the doll / god though. It forced me to stretch my wings as an artist and steal one last piece from the demo skeleton – its head, on to which I sculpted the gods face on only one side. Freaked my friends and family out the whole time I was working on him too!
To the “dead” torso I added a rib case in front and half of a spinal column in back all made from paper clay and painted with acrylic paints and sealed with a matte finish varnish.
After all the skeleton bits where assembled and the head constructed and attached, I wrapped his “dead” leg in soaking wet grey suede and bound it in place with cords over textural elements. Once the leather dried I added a few more layers of twisted leather to enhance the look I was going for, coated the whole thing with glue to make it thick, then when that dried, coated the leg in several layers of high gloss varnish. The end result gives the effect of mummification in a bog or dry cave. There is a sense that under the ripples of the contorted, and now shinny leather, you can feel the remaining bone of the dead man’s leg.
Next I started working on his more virile side. Yup he is anatomically correct, and … um… accurate shall we say… on each side of his pelvic region. I’ll let you figure out how that works.
His living side got a copper linen pant leg sewn on. Then I used green raw hide to wrap with Holly and Willow branches that I have been drying from Yule 2007 around the leg and up to his torso. In and around this I added flowers and greenery and finally lichen and stones. His living foot got an additional paint job to look more dirt covered, then stones glued over that, and finally copper threads were woven in to represent the thinnest of roots reaching down into the ground.
The skull on the living side was connected to the body with neck muscles naturally, so those had to be layered in just as the face muscles had been put in. Then to balance the weight of the ribcage I enhanced some of the muscle tone on the upper chest of the living side and smoothed all the edges down.
Next came paint work. I mixed up a close match grey-green paint to cover the sculptural elements on the living side and then went ahead and covered his whole torso in the new shade since he liked it so much. I added a multi-toned green dividing line between “life and death” instead of a blood red one, since as a god of vegetation I figured when he bled it was probably going to be closer to chlorophyll in color than hemoglobin. The final paint work for him was the spiral tattoos all along his arm and chest and one just over his eye, and of course the vibrant blue of his irises.
Possibly the scariest part of the god’s construction was his antlers. I had to punch holes into this lovely sculpted skull and then make the dang things not only stand up, but stay put! To say I procrastinated about that is to put it mildly. But eventually time and deadlines makes all of us, even me, jump off the cliff, and I put the holes in place. With that done, it was easy to commit to the rest.
The antlers themselves are modeled after those of the White Tailed deer and made on a wire armature covered with cloth and then paper clay and paint. On the “living” side I also garment weight suede to replicate the “velvet” that stags antlers carry in early spring. The antler on the “dead” side has already lost its velvet and so represents a later stage of the stag’s life cycle.
The final element is the God’s base which was made to represent a tree in both its fertile growth phase and its barren phase. At the center is the support rod wrapped in brown velvet that matches the velvet which covers the base itself. Part of the God’s belt includes a loop in the back that attaches to this rod for added support when being displayed.
Photos by Jamie Morgan
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Wiccan Horned God OOAK Altar Doll
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Product Description:
$ 440.00
The Horned God was a lot of fun to make. This is the work I love to do, all the sculptural elements and mixing various media in one form.
I started by completely changing the color of the base doll’s body. Oddly enough :) Tonner Dolls does not make a base form that is half grey-green and half bone-white (I can’t imagine why!). So after an extensive web search by Jamie and myself, we found a spray paint that was designed to bind with vinyl and used that to spray him the correct shades of life and death. Since I cant be around harsh chemicals, Jamie took that task on for me, bless her! It was worth the effort though. The doll’s skin is the same texture as those coming directly from the store, only in the colors he and I wanted!
Next up was a little more deconstruction. He lost both his right arm and right foot in quick succession, only to have them replaced with plastic skeleton versions (“borrowed” from a demonstration skeleton used by schools and doctor’s offices). Then I promptly lost his head. I kid you not. I lost his head. It had been removed back when I thought I was going to do a reroot on this particular base doll, and we left it off to do the spray paint job and then I set it aside to dry. And lost it. This apparently was all part of a plot on the part of the doll / god though. It forced me to stretch my wings as an artist and steal one last piece from the demo skeleton – its head, on to which I sculpted the gods face on only one side. Freaked my friends and family out the whole time I was working on him too!
To the “dead” torso I added a rib case in front and half of a spinal column in back all made from paper clay and painted with acrylic paints and sealed with a matte finish varnish.
After all the skeleton bits where assembled and the head constructed and attached, I wrapped his “dead” leg in soaking wet grey suede and bound it in place with cords over textural elements. Once the leather dried I added a few more layers of twisted leather to enhance the look I was going for, coated the whole thing with glue to make it thick, then when that dried, coated the leg in several layers of high gloss varnish. The end result gives the effect of mummification in a bog or dry cave. There is a sense that under the ripples of the contorted, and now shinny leather, you can feel the remaining bone of the dead man’s leg.
Next I started working on his more virile side. Yup he is anatomically correct, and … um… accurate shall we say… on each side of his pelvic region. I’ll let you figure out how that works.
His living side got a copper linen pant leg sewn on. Then I used green raw hide to wrap with Holly and Willow branches that I have been drying from Yule 2007 around the leg and up to his torso. In and around this I added flowers and greenery and finally lichen and stones. His living foot got an additional paint job to look more dirt covered, then stones glued over that, and finally copper threads were woven in to represent the thinnest of roots reaching down into the ground.
The skull on the living side was connected to the body with neck muscles naturally, so those had to be layered in just as the face muscles had been put in. Then to balance the weight of the ribcage I enhanced some of the muscle tone on the upper chest of the living side and smoothed all the edges down.
Next came paint work. I mixed up a close match grey-green paint to cover the sculptural elements on the living side and then went ahead and covered his whole torso in the new shade since he liked it so much. I added a multi-toned green dividing line between “life and death” instead of a blood red one, since as a god of vegetation I figured when he bled it was probably going to be closer to chlorophyll in color than hemoglobin. The final paint work for him was the spiral tattoos all along his arm and chest and one just over his eye, and of course the vibrant blue of his irises.
Possibly the scariest part of the god’s construction was his antlers. I had to punch holes into this lovely sculpted skull and then make the dang things not only stand up, but stay put! To say I procrastinated about that is to put it mildly. But eventually time and deadlines makes all of us, even me, jump off the cliff, and I put the holes in place. With that done, it was easy to commit to the rest.
The antlers themselves are modeled after those of the White Tailed deer and made on a wire armature covered with cloth and then paper clay and paint. On the “living” side I also garment weight suede to replicate the “velvet” that stags antlers carry in early spring. The antler on the “dead” side has already lost its velvet and so represents a later stage of the stag’s life cycle.
The final element is the God’s base which was made to represent a tree in both its fertile growth phase and its barren phase. At the center is the support rod wrapped in brown velvet that matches the velvet which covers the base itself. Part of the God’s belt includes a loop in the back that attaches to this rod for added support when being displayed.
Photos by Jamie Morgan
I started by completely changing the color of the base doll’s body. Oddly enough :) Tonner Dolls does not make a base form that is half grey-green and half bone-white (I can’t imagine why!). So after an extensive web search by Jamie and myself, we found a spray paint that was designed to bind with vinyl and used that to spray him the correct shades of life and death. Since I cant be around harsh chemicals, Jamie took that task on for me, bless her! It was worth the effort though. The doll’s skin is the same texture as those coming directly from the store, only in the colors he and I wanted!
Next up was a little more deconstruction. He lost both his right arm and right foot in quick succession, only to have them replaced with plastic skeleton versions (“borrowed” from a demonstration skeleton used by schools and doctor’s offices). Then I promptly lost his head. I kid you not. I lost his head. It had been removed back when I thought I was going to do a reroot on this particular base doll, and we left it off to do the spray paint job and then I set it aside to dry. And lost it. This apparently was all part of a plot on the part of the doll / god though. It forced me to stretch my wings as an artist and steal one last piece from the demo skeleton – its head, on to which I sculpted the gods face on only one side. Freaked my friends and family out the whole time I was working on him too!
To the “dead” torso I added a rib case in front and half of a spinal column in back all made from paper clay and painted with acrylic paints and sealed with a matte finish varnish.
After all the skeleton bits where assembled and the head constructed and attached, I wrapped his “dead” leg in soaking wet grey suede and bound it in place with cords over textural elements. Once the leather dried I added a few more layers of twisted leather to enhance the look I was going for, coated the whole thing with glue to make it thick, then when that dried, coated the leg in several layers of high gloss varnish. The end result gives the effect of mummification in a bog or dry cave. There is a sense that under the ripples of the contorted, and now shinny leather, you can feel the remaining bone of the dead man’s leg.
Next I started working on his more virile side. Yup he is anatomically correct, and … um… accurate shall we say… on each side of his pelvic region. I’ll let you figure out how that works.
His living side got a copper linen pant leg sewn on. Then I used green raw hide to wrap with Holly and Willow branches that I have been drying from Yule 2007 around the leg and up to his torso. In and around this I added flowers and greenery and finally lichen and stones. His living foot got an additional paint job to look more dirt covered, then stones glued over that, and finally copper threads were woven in to represent the thinnest of roots reaching down into the ground.
The skull on the living side was connected to the body with neck muscles naturally, so those had to be layered in just as the face muscles had been put in. Then to balance the weight of the ribcage I enhanced some of the muscle tone on the upper chest of the living side and smoothed all the edges down.
Next came paint work. I mixed up a close match grey-green paint to cover the sculptural elements on the living side and then went ahead and covered his whole torso in the new shade since he liked it so much. I added a multi-toned green dividing line between “life and death” instead of a blood red one, since as a god of vegetation I figured when he bled it was probably going to be closer to chlorophyll in color than hemoglobin. The final paint work for him was the spiral tattoos all along his arm and chest and one just over his eye, and of course the vibrant blue of his irises.
Possibly the scariest part of the god’s construction was his antlers. I had to punch holes into this lovely sculpted skull and then make the dang things not only stand up, but stay put! To say I procrastinated about that is to put it mildly. But eventually time and deadlines makes all of us, even me, jump off the cliff, and I put the holes in place. With that done, it was easy to commit to the rest.
The antlers themselves are modeled after those of the White Tailed deer and made on a wire armature covered with cloth and then paper clay and paint. On the “living” side I also garment weight suede to replicate the “velvet” that stags antlers carry in early spring. The antler on the “dead” side has already lost its velvet and so represents a later stage of the stag’s life cycle.
The final element is the God’s base which was made to represent a tree in both its fertile growth phase and its barren phase. At the center is the support rod wrapped in brown velvet that matches the velvet which covers the base itself. Part of the God’s belt includes a loop in the back that attaches to this rod for added support when being displayed.
Photos by Jamie Morgan
Inspiration / Story behind this Product:
“Listen to the words of the Old Horned One, who is ever young.”
Those are the opening words to the Charge of the God that Jamie and I wrote as a parallel piece to the Charge of the Goddess written by Doreen Valiente.
He was created for a ritual Jamie and I wrote for Pantheacon 2009 called “A Walk in the Garden of Polarity”. We focused on various aspects of the Wiccan God and Goddess and offered up a ritual to help other experience those energies. To give vision to those ideas I created two dolls, the God and Goddess for the main altar.
I had wanted to do a Wiccan God doll for a while but having difficulty with the interpretation. He’s a slippery one to pin down to one image frankly. I went through several different sketches some truly awful before I was gifted with the one that led to this doll, on Samhain morning no less. Funny how you have to wait for the right time of year for some of these pieces of sacred art!
In some versions of Wiccan mythology the Horned Lord is seen as the God of Death and Resurrection. By this we mean that like the plants and animals that are associated with Him, he lives his most vibrant and obvious life during the ripe warm days of fertile summer, dies during the rain and snow of winter and is reborn each spring with the kiss of the Goddess. That’s all lovely, but how the heck do you show that in a doll? I didn’t know either for the longest time! But with the Samhain drawing I was given an image of a two sided figure. One half that was “dead” and made of bone and lifeless elements. The other was “alive” and showing off that life to its fullest. And oddly enough in the original design sketch he did not have antlers, instead I was going to do beaded hair in two colors, bone white on the dead side and vibrant green on the living side. He changed that plan while we were in production.
“For behold, I have been beside thee from the first sunrise and will walk with thee to the end of days”
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$440.00
Shipping:
Canada $25.00
$15.00 if purchased with another item
United States $20.00
$10.00 if purchased with another item
All Other Countries $35.00
$20.00 if purchased with another item
Accepted Payment Methods:
Also Accepts:
- Personal Check
- Money Order
Materials Used:
Paper clay, plastic, linen, leather, silk, velvet, arcylic paint, passion, magic
Quick Bio:
A while back, two friends were sharing some mutually fulfilling crafting time on their respective projects; when they had this wild idea to combine their respective businesses and skills together to c...
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