Thread: Question about painting a Bucky Skull

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We're doing a bit of a Dia de los Muertos "Day of the Dead" theme this year for our display. And I need to paint a Bucky skull but I'm not sure what kind of paint would take to it well? The prop will be outside but it'll protected pretty well from any rain and wind. My first thought was acrylic but I'm worried it might chip or get messed up if it does indeed get wet.

Why not try a Minwax gel stain, in either Mahogany or Aged Oak?
Once dry, the color holds even when if it gets wet.


"Head-to-head" comparison of Aged Oak (left) and Mahogany (right)

the thing is I don't need to age the skull (I should have mentioned this in my first post),
I need to paint it like like a Day of the Dead sugar skull. Kind of like this: Large Sugar Skull on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Oh, in that case, try acrylics and then coat with several coats of a water-based polyurethane.


Minwax Polycrylic (Home Depot, Lowes, etc.)


Exterior varnish (Michaels, Joann, etc.)

But doesn't the proportion of a bucky skull differ from that of a traditional sugar skull?

Thanks I'll give that a try and see how it goes! Yeah the proportion does differ, but I'm not really trying to get it to look exactly like a sugar skull,
just the general idea. So the bucky is recognizable as a Day of the Dead character rather than just another skeleton.