Face, Clay and Latex

Last lesson we cast our faces with modroc and plaster and after two weeks we finally got to start adding and building up clay features - just like our body cast work we had to use our folk art theme to create not just a face cast but a folk mask.

Since my poor face cast had suffered from lack-of-a-nose-itus, my first job when building facial features up with clay was to give myself a nose! However it ended up looking a bit like a piggy nose but I have quite a wide nostrils, I have admitted it and have embraced it - I also built up my lips and my eyebrow area which had also gone missing.

After making my face look semi-lifelike, I needed to start incorporating folk art influences into my design for my mask - so after brainstorming some ideas verbally and using my resources I found in my folk art research - I decided to do a design that had influenced from Tibetan mask but with bright colours found in British folk art.

So I added this strip/gill looking things on around my eyes, cheeks and the side of my face, also I had decorative eyebrows which was a common trait in the Tibetan kind of mask.

When it came to the eyes I found a common feature in folk mask is that they are often large, round and that they protrude out quite far out - since I liked this look and my mask looked unfinished without something being done in the eye socket area.

My final adjustment was making the nose look a bit more pointy.

Then when I stepped back and looked at it the mask reminded me of the masks that the performers wear in Cirque du Soleil - previously (when I still wanted to be a costume maker - and for that company as well!) I have done a lot of work and research into that kind of circus design before and I unconsciously placed that influence in my mask.

Then after covering the mask in soft soap I started to cover the mask in latex and slowly started to layer layers of latex, so hopefully next lesson I will get started in adding detail to the mask!