Affiliate Disclaimer: this page contains affiliate links. For more information please click here.
In this video I show you how to build a Giant Grinch Cutout

A combination of my procrastination and the BS that 2020 has been, I found myself fighting straight black-Friday style in Home Depot for the last of the Christmas lights… in the first week of December.. and OK I get it, Christmas is coming earlier ever year but seriously? One of our neighbors had Christmas decorations out the day after Halloween. WTF happened to Thanksgiving? The employees in Home depot were literally taking down the season displays while people were picking through the leftovers. Again this was the first week in December. SMH..

Anyway… I’ve seen this Grinch idea before and wanted to do it for years but I figure what is more appropriate for 2020 than the Grinch stealing Christmas right?

I knew that 1/4 inch plywood was too small so I settled on 3/8 plywood for the cutout (untreated but good luck finding treated plywood right now anyway). The Grinch decorations I’ve seen online have all been tiny, 36″ or 48″ cutout of the Grinch. I get it, it’s hard to ship anything bigger but in the cartoon book and movie the Grinch is tall AF. So I decided to make him almost 8ft Tall. I found my favorite rendition online and started sketching it out on my 3/8 plywood.

Now I’m no artist so I immediately looked for a measurable reference point to start this sketch. I noticed that this back and torso sections were almost a perfect half-circle. So I measured my own torso and, at 5’11”, the distance from my tailbone to the back of my neck is about 34-36 inches. I figured if the Grinch is 7 or 8 ft tall then I should start with a 40-46″ torso. With this measurement in mind I start sketching a half-circle take takes up half the plywood vertically and almost all of it horizontally.

I continue sketching the general outline with a pencil and as I build confidence I confirm my decisions with a big fat sharpie. This method worked well for me, I’m an analytical thinker and It’s hard to tap into my artistic brain without some solid anchor points.

I made mistakes here and there and at one point I had a problem getting the legs and lower half to line up.. his arms were in the wrong place, and after endless corrections it just wasn’t working out.. I was starting to doubt my artistic ability. I thought about throwing the whole thing in the trash but I pushed through anyway and just sketched over my mistakes until I was satisfied with the result.

When I finally made all the lines meet up and a completed drawing I caught a second wind and was ready to start with color. For this I used mostly Rustoleum oil-based paints. I had a bunch left over from other projects and I figured oil-based would eliminate the need for primer. – I was wrong but more on that later-

The red I had was “sunrise red” and it just seemed too red to me. Like a fire-engine red and not a Christmas red if you know what I mean. So I added a few drops of flat black a little at a time until I found the perfect shade of deep, dark red. Pro tip here – if you hand mix a color mix enough to do more than what you need and don’t throw out the leftovers. I wasn’t thinking when I did this and I didn’t have a match for touch ups later. Turns out it’s IMPOSSIBLE to re-mix the same color by hand. I literally scooped puddles of red paint out of my trash can for touch-ups once I realized I “f’d” up there. I paint up to my sharpie outlines and try to leave a little visibility on these outlines for later. I know I have to come back with black paint and I still want to be able to see them.

The white was next but I actually got the worst coverage with white. Everything was bleeding through the paint and I made at least 3 coats on all of the white.

The green was the only thing I had to have color-matched. I took my printout to my favorite local hardware store and had them mix me up some Grinch Green! – (they still mix colors by hand by the way!) It’s a latex paint and not an oil based but I didn’t have any issues with the two meeting each other on the plywood. I finish out all of the color and let it dry for 12 plus hours.

After painting all of these other sections I knew I was going to need some smaller brushes but I didn’t have any so I just cut about 3/4’s of the bristles off of my disposable brush to make it smaller. This was the perfect size for all of the black outlines I had to do. My worst enemy here was extra droplets of paint landing on some otherwise finished section.

Looking at the original cartoon, the Grinch has yellow eyes so I attempted to color his eyes in with some leftover yellow spray paint. I figured since it was spray paint I would do this first and I could paint over the rest later. It was too yellow and I wound up trying to blend it with white.. It was just a bad idea all around and not worth the time.

I raced against the sunset to finish the black out lines and let everything dry overnight.

Save the colors for touch-ups. I had some stray paint drips and mistakes here and here.

The next day I cut the outline for the whole thing with a jigsaw. I used masking tape to try and help prevent scarring to my already painted surfaces. This only kind-of worked but it was better than nothing. As I mentioned before, don’t discard you paint until your finished with the whole thing. I actually let my oil-based brushed soak in paint thinner overnight so I could keep using them the next day. Lol.

With the cutting done I’m ready to start building some supports and get this dude set up in the front yard.

I used some scrap 1×2’s to steak down and support the Grinch.
I assembled everything with a nail gun since I wasn’t 100% sure of my placement in the yard. Next time I will use screws so it’s easier to disassemble and reusable.

I’m using sandbags to anchor the lights since I have a flat roof with nothing to anchor to so I just filled some sammich bags with sand and used fishing strings to tie the lights off. This worked pretty well.

I’m very impressed with how well this turned out and I’m excited to anther cutout, maybe max the dog or Windy Who… maybe next year.