Mask Painting

Having amassed a collection of blank masks, the time had come to start painting them.  I’ll be the first to admit that colour is not my strongest point, so I’m glad I’ve got a few to play with!

A basic red devil mask with silly eyebrows.  I’m thinking about adding some gold detailing to make it more interesting, or maybe some occult symbols across the forehead.

  

Here I tried a technique for an aged, cracked surface.  If I ever want to do a bark texture mask, I’ll know how.  The red one resulted in much larger cracks, perhaps because my red paint is much older and thicker.

I tried using gold glass paint to create the raised gold details on this chap.  It worked, but I still prefer the thicker, less uniform lines with the gold leaf that I did a month or so ago.

And a cat mask.  A more refined crackled surface, painted with watercolours.  I’d like to age this a bit and add a layer of varnish, but I rather like it and don’t want to spoil it with a technique that fails so I’ll have to experiment a bit more before finishing him off.

Advertisement

Cats, Devils and Cthulhu

Back to papier mache masks.  I’d started to get a little fed up with plasticine as a sculpting material.  It was difficult to work with and took forever to create the details that I wanted so I ordered some clay and a couple of airtight containers, and a couple of weekends ago finally found the time to try it out.

What a difference!  I can’t imagine how I put up with the plasticine now.  Using clay has reminded me how much I used to love working with it at school many many moons ago.  It’s so much more agreeable and much easier to smooth.  I began by making a cat and devil sculpt:

As you can see, the cat mask was sculpted over the same clay face I used previously.  For the devil mask, I pushed the clay into a modroc cast I’d made of that same face:

This essentially replicated the underlying clay face, but in damp, workable clay.  I added details and chopped off the lower part of the face, and all this resulted in a much closer fit than the cat mask.

The cat and devil mask popped out of the molds.  They need trimming around the eyes and edges, but otherwise it seemed to work brilliantly!  The cat mask is based on the traditional cat masks found in Venice.  I liked the simple form of them, so didn’t change too much when I made my own.

And finally, I wanted to try something a little more complex, and Cthulhu seemed like the perfect subject (when is he not?).  I pondered over how to do the tentacles for some time.  The sketch on the far right would no doubt be easiest: a stylised straight tentacle look.  But who wants to go for the easiest option?  I studied some photos of classical statues with curly beards, then went for it:

The clay Cthulhu sculpt, and the resulting mask as it was this morning; a layer of glue drying so slowly that I had to hold it for the photo otherwise it’d stick itself to my favourite Generic Background paper, and we can’t have that.

In case you can’t tell, I also discovered Instagram.  I’m using it to document my mask making trials and errors as I always have my phone nearby while I work and it’s easy enough to snap a work in progress.  My camera lives upstairs in a drawer, and sometimes you have to be quick before something dries/runs/sets in the wrong place.  See what I’m up to on Instagram.

Leather Maskmaking

With Halloween on the way, I wanted to make a mask for a costume and thought it would be a good excuse to try leather maskmaking.  I’d used leather before in bookbinding and enjoyed working with the material, so it only seemed natural to have a go at using it for masks as well. 

 

There was slightly more leather included in the delivery than I expected, but that just means I’ll have more to experiment with…

Leather mask making seems fairly simple.  Soak the leather.  Form the leather.  Dry the leather.  Paint the leather.  I’m sure it gets more complicated when you want to engrave or singe designs into the surface, but for the moment it’s easy enough to make a form.

My first leather mask was an antlered half face mask with a rather large nose.  I’d been watching the new Hannibal TV show, so Will Graham’s nightmare stag may well have crept into my subconcious only to be released in mask form, but it took a friend to point out the link!

The painted leather stag mask.

I had an odd-shaped piece of leather left over from where I’d cut out the stag, so I turned it into a smaller horned mask:

I actually like the form of this one more than the stag.  For a start it’s less likely to poke people’s eyes out when they stand near you.

You’d think I’d start making the mask for the costume after that, but no: further distration ensued.  I’d been wanting to make a Bioshock Splicer mask for a while, but thought the ears would be too delicate for a papier mache.  Would it work in leather instead?

 

Yes, yes it does.

I should point out the kitchen roll in the second photo is actually supporting the cheeks while they dry in position.  Glamorous, I know, but I ran out of ramekins.

Conclusion: leather maskmaking is FUN, and will be happening again shortly.

Masks and Moldmaking

After making a few masks by applying the papier mache directly onto the sculpt (see previous post) I decided I wanted a way to produce multiple copies of the same design.  This’d make it less labour-intensive, quicker, and would save me worrying about ruining hours of work on a mask by getting the decoration wrong.  So, back to the research.  In Venice, they seemed to create a clay sculpt of their design, then cast it in plaster to create a mold for the papier mache.

Plaster of Paris seems to set in most circumstances (even underwater) so I skipped the clingfilm and poured it straight over a new plasticine sculpt.  My suspicions proved correct, and it set with no problems.  I can only assume it was the glue component of the papier mache that didn’t like the plasticine in my last post.

  

The plasticine then peeled out of the mold easily, leaving a smooth surface for the mache.

And there we go!  A replicable design.  The loose bits of mache need sticking down, the edge trimming, and a smooth layer added on top, but it still takes a fraction of the time the other method did.  Still- I’ll use the method from the last post if I want to make a one-off mask, or a more complex design.  The more complex the surfaces, the harder it’ll be to get it out of the mold.

Here I experimented with a method for raised gold detailing using replica gold leaf.  Think I need some practice.  I also tried adding a wash of dark paint and then removing most of it to give an aged appearance and visually deepen the recesses.  Again, not satisfactory and will need a good bit of experimentation before I try it on a mask I like!

 

Here I used the same technique to create the raised lines, but instead of using gold leaf, I picked them out with gold acrylic paint above by just covering the whole area in gold paint, and below by trying to stick to the raised areas, and distressing the rest with another wash of dark paint.  I think it makes it look like it’s just been dug up, rather than carefully stored and aged for half a century, but there we go.

All of this was to try and make a mask for a friend, and here’s what I produced by the end of that period of experimenting.  My first finished mask: gold leaf raised detailing on blue and gold.

Let the Maskmaking Begin…

I’ve always loved masks: from recurring obsessions with Phantom of the Opera and Labyrinth, to finding every project for my anthropology degree tended towards masquerade and transformation.  I’ve also had a good few attempts at making them throughout my life, but it’s been a while since I attempted it with any real focus on refining technique.  My early masks were thick, unweildy, lumpy papier-mache creations, better suited for hanging on the wall than wearing.

Earlier this year I went on a short holiday to Venice with friends.  As a mask obsessive, it’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit, and I was not disappointed!  I’m afraid I dragged my friends into every second mask shop that we saw (and there’s certainly no lack of them), turning the masks over and trying to work out how they were made, as well as admiring the amazingly skilled decoration.  Needless to say, I came back inspired and fired with determination to give mask making another shot.  I researched, bought a couple of books, and experimented for a few months.

For my first attempt I used a method suggested by Jonni Good in her book ‘How to Make Masks’, which is well worth buying if you’re interested in starting to make masks.  It uses easily obtainable materials, and results in a lightweight, smooth mask.  Jonni also runs an excellent website over at Ultimate Paper Mache filled with great tips, videos and examples of her work which helped no end.

For my very first attempt I used an old clay model of my face (I’m sure everyone has one of these lying around) and created a sculpt from plasticine on top.  I then built the papier mache directly onto the finished model:

   

Plasticine is horrible to work with, I’ll say that straight away.  Smelly, stubborn, and leaves a nasty residue on your hands.  I also discovered that it reacts badly with the plaster/glue papier mache mix and retards the drying process.  After half a week it was still gloopy, so I abandoned this mask and started afresh.

I decided to go for a full face mask, again using plasticine on top of the clay model.  This time I covered the model in clingfilm (using vaseline to get it to adhere to the model and follow all the recesses and details), and then added the mache.  This worked an awful lot better, and the mask was almost dry in an hour.

Here’s the devil mask trimmed and after a bit of sanding.  It fits my face so well it hardly needs a cord to stay on!  There’s still a bit of smoothing to do before I paint him.  The disadvantage of this method is that once the mache is dry, you’re pretty much guaranteed to destroy the original sculpt as you pull it out of the back of the mask.  That makes this chap a one-off, so I’m a little nervous about painting him in case it goes wrong.  I decided to make a few more masks to experiment on before painting this one, and to do that I wanted a method that would let me create multiples of a particular design…

 

Baking Bad

I couldn’t let Breaking Bad finish without some kind of celebration.  It has, after all, been one hell of a ride these last few years, and I have no idea what I’m going to do with my Monday nights now it’s all over.

Stage one: the cake.

It’s a blue (well, more aquamarine to be honest, damn you Todd!) and white marbled two layer cake.  This layer did a bit of a chestburster inpression as I tried to bash coax it gently out of the tin, but as you can see the cracks where it was reattached are barely noticable.  Or at least, it’ll all be covered in piles of icing soon, so frankly who cares.

And here it is, possibly the most dangerous Breaking Bad cake in East Anglia.  The ‘crystal meth’ is rock candy (see previous post) and while not as dangerous as the first lot I made I’d still recommend removing the big shards before taking a bite!

The second batch of cake mix I made into cupcakes for my fellow BrBa obsessed colleagues. I made about 15 and they disappeared pretty quickly, so I’m glad I kept a few aside for the actual episode later that night!

I had a little of the candy glass left over, so… dangerous cake happened.  This one was later carefully deconstructed and eaten by trained professionals.

By the time I’d finished baking, I was on a bit of a sugar high so of course Breaking Bad Chocolates seemed like a brilliant idea, never mind that I already had half a kitchen’s worth of washing up to do.

Dark chocolate with blue-tinted white chocolate filling and candyfloss-flavoured crystals.  Nom.

Monday evening finally came around and before viewing commenced we ate (no rumbling stomachs would dare interrupt this episode!): the boy had cooked us Pollos Hermanos chicken in a basket, complete with Cap’n Cook’s Special Ingredient fries.  An awesome surprise to make the night complete!