Cookie Monster - Hellraiser Cookie Mask

Pretty much anybody who ever met me will know that I love Halloween, but since most of my artistic pursuits tend to be very whimsical, it might not be immediately obvious that I love horror movies too. That love dates back some forty years, and was largely fostered by a deep appreciation for the elaborate prosthetics and special makeup effects that dominated the horror genre in the 1980s.

Well, a career in horror effects is not what fate had in store for me, but once in a while it's nice to dip my toe in that pool.

This past October, three things happened simultaneously:

First, I was preparing to open an exhibition of seventeen original paintings at my local library on November 1st.

Second, because of the need to concentrate on that show, I was building a very casual Halloween costume around a mask that I had already made.

Third, there was a brand-new original Hellraiser movie about to premiere on Hulu.

The Halloween costume would end up being this elephant, inspired by those pink frosted circus animal cookies. And because I was spending a bunch of time working with that motif, it ended up creeping into my paintings as well. Is it any wonder, then, when Hellraiser came out - with all those stunning new Cenobite designs - that I immediately imagined what the Hell priest would look like if she were a delicious cookie?

The idea was simple. Maybe even obvious. Practically inevitable. The mask would be a variation of the character popularly known as 'Pinhead', but the skin would be pink frosting, and where the gridlines were carved, you would be able to see the cookie underneath. At each juncture, there would be a metal pin tipped with a brightly-colored sugar crystal.

Plaster gauze, paper mache clay, paper, flour paste, scrap cardboard, floral pins, glue, paint, clay carving tools, cutting mat

Here's something crazy: it's been over a year and a half since I made a mask! Since the big mask show I had in 2021, I've had a number of projects (including the exhibit I was preparing for the library!) but none of it was mask-related. What if I forgot how to do it?

There was a point in the planning stages where I was considering making this thing an actual animal mask, like a bear or something, but once I had decided to go ahead and let it be a human figure, I knew pretty much what I had to do. I wanted this mask to sit snugly on my head, requiring no ties or anything to hold it in place. So I put my hair under a bandana and wrapped cling film around my skull, before applying a few layers of plaster gauze. The goal was to carry the plaster cast back along the crown of my head.

Once that was dry, I used corrugated cardboard and tape to build out the rest of the form.

I used traditional paper mache - with flour paste and old comic books - to finish the head shape. Creative Paperclay is my brand of choice for over-the-counter paper mache clay, which I used to start smoothing out the facial contours. But it's the first brand I ever tried and it just happens to work for me. I'm not suggesting that you switch, or that you shouldn't buy whatever they have at your local shop.

Knowing that I would probably lose a lot of detail once I started in on the complicated grid makeup, I did my best to get things looking sharp first! I gave him a bit of a sneer, like Billy Idol, or a softer version of Doug Bradley on the original Hellraiser poster. Clenched teeth allowed a viewer an immediate peek at the reality of what lies beneath his skin: cookie. Delicious cookie. Probably with some vanilla extract.

I also spent a lot of time examining pictures of the various Pinhead makeup designs. Doug Bradley played the character in eight different films, so there were several to study. And Jamie Clayton in the new film brings a whole new elegance to the character, and to the makeup design as well.

While I did simplify the design quite a lot (by four whole rows!) I remained true to the style, adopting the features that I felt made the most sense and appeared the most elegant.

Across the crown of the head, I plotted the grid with a ruler to make sure that it was rather even, then drew it in freehand over the contours of the face. Then I just needed to figure out how to actually build it out of clay.

I tried a few different approaches for bringing the grid design to life, but the most obvious approach worked the best. I rolled out the paper clay onto a cutting mat, and trimmed each piece to fit the facial section. I used flour paste, applied with a paint brush, as an adhesive. You can cut the pieces a bit large, attach them to the mask and then trim the excess right on the surface.

These segments do require a bit of cultivation. As the clay dries, it contracts, and the edges may curl a bit. You need to tend to the edges while they are still flexible, and then seal them back down with additional clay.

After all of the segments were set, the overall design was pretty good but it still looked like a face with a bunch of extra pieces stuck on. So, working in sections, I softened chunks of paper clay with water and smashed it into the grooves. Then I redefined the grooves using a clay sculpting tool, but pretty much anything small would work. The clay is really soft when you wet it, so dipping a craft knife or clay tool in water and running it along the sides is a good way to clean up the rough edges.

This second round of clay really tied it all together, making the face appear more cohesive. Sanding it didn't hurt, either!

I spent some time contouring with the clay, and adjusting the relationships between adjacent segments, before sanding it all again.

Trimming the edges, then fully wrapping them with paper mache, was the end of phase one.

I chose to make the pins out of floral arrangement pins, not because of any special utility but because I had a bunch of them left over from a previous project. They are long, stiff, sharpish but not pointed, and shaped like extra large staples. So I made each floral pin into two of my own pins; first I cut them in half, then bent the bits down (see photo), and formed a ball around the cut end using a small mass of paper mache clay.

These would all be painted in bright, candy colors.

Even though this is a clear homage, I nevertheless wanted to include some feature on this mask that was not simply adapted from the pinhead design. My idea was to continue the carving along two of the rows at the back edge of the grid, creating two long strips reaching down toward the base of the mask. The strips would appear to be sliced out, folded upward, and then pinned into place.

The negative space was made by building up the surrounding area from paper clay. The actual strips were pieces of corrugated cardboard, coated in traditional paper mache and then glued into place, before finalizing the design with paper clay details.

After refining the strips at the back of the head, I spent some time going over the whole mask to make little tweaks. The last step was to add a few sugar crystals to the mask, built from paper clay. I didn't use too many, since there would be a lot of them on pins, but I still wanted a few on the actual surface.

First step in the paint job was to mix up a batch of cookie color. I covered the inside with it, laid it into all the grooves, the teeth, and the area around the eyes. This really makes it pop! I started with the mixture a bit dark, figuring that I could lighten it as necessary.

The color that I use for the frosting is just a fluorescent pink mixed with opaque white, and in previous projects I let this mixture be pretty deep and bright. But I wanted to change that up just a little bit.

I wasn't sure this would 'read', and frankly I'm still not entirely convinced that it worked, but I tried to make the pink frosting reflect the fact that this character is dead. Or stale. It's a cenobite, to the extent that a cookie can be a cenobite.

First, I gave the whole surface a base coat of a paler pink than I had previously utilized on any of the other circus cookie projects. Next, I began to move from section to section, using an even paler mixture around the edges, and then blushing out the center with a slightly deeper pink.

The idea was to lean into this notion that the frosting was a substitute for skin. This was still bright pink, with decorative sugar; it was still frosting. But the segments looked a bit like dead skin, as if they had been bled out or dried.

When it came time to apply the pins, the most important tools were a sharp awl, and a strong gel glue. This Gorilla glue that is pictured is the one I had on hand that worked the best for this job. Its most important feature is that I could pick up tiny beads of it with a toothpick and place them anywhere I want with great ease.

Boring each hole with an awl allowed me to carefully aim each one, so that the pins would stick out at the proper angle. Ideally, you only want to punch each hole once; the more you move the awl, the looser the hole and the harder it's going to be to securely attach the pins.

I punched a hole, put a bead of glue on it, inserted the pin, and made sure it was snug. When each pin was set, I put another bead of glue on the hole.

After I placed the first few pins, I let it sit overnight so I could gauge whether the glue was going to have any caustic effect on the surrounding paint. Sometimes it does. In this case (possibly because the amount was so small) the paint around the holes was mostly unaffected, so once the glue dried I just painted over the area and moved on.

I started placing the pins along the center line and carefully moved outward, leaving myself plenty of room to handle the mask, and making sure I still had a clear path to touch up any areas of paint that I needed to reach along the way. It was also important that the pins along the jawline didn't interfere with the mask's ability to sit on a flat surface. The last thing I wanted was a mask that had to be constantly on some kind of elevated display!

This makes me laugh. As I said to my brother, it's a hilarious joke but it takes forever to tell. In this case, it took about twelve days, but it was worth it!

The mask is pretty easy to put on, and snug - I'm not sure how well this would fit another person. It was built on my head and only has so much ability to accommodate. That said, I can move quite freely without worrying that the mask will dislodge!

Also, the pins are surprisingly secure. It is not difficult to take the mask off and on without avoiding them, but when you do brush a pin, there is no sense that they're in danger of popping out.

And I think it sells the gag! Yeah, the Venn diagram where these two motifs intersect may have a lonesome area of union, but you recognize them. Maybe you don't think this is funny (and who can blame you? I can't explain why I think it's funny, and I just spent twelve days making it) but you recognize the elements.

Hopefully, the other seven people on planet earth who think this is funny, will manage to find it. You're welcome.