Eyebrows

Last month, evil little voices began whispering in my ear and telling me that the deer mask needed big, bushy eyebrows. I stood firm and didn't give in, as next they'd be asking for hairy ears, but I did begin to wonder, maybe the eyebrows did need *something*. Here's the mask with the eyebrows in question:

The first thing I did was to print out the above photo and sketch over the then-current eyebrows with a blue highlighter, to see more clearly what I already had (below.) First thing I noticed was that the eyebrows were asymmetrical. Not that that's a big issue, I think most eyebrows are asymmetrical, but it gave me a place to begin my explorations.

Below, two sketches with symmetrical eyebrows, one with the "left hand" style of eyebrow, and the other with the "right hand" style. I didn't like either of these.

Maybe it was the smooth, unwrinkled skin on the forehead between the eyebrows that was bothering me? I tried sketching wrinkles in between the eyebrows, but I didn't like them either.

Not sure where to go from here, I decided to hit the books. Below is one of my all time favorite reference books in my mask library. It's informative, easy to use, and beautifully illustrated.

Below are illustrations for the muscles responsible for thunderous eyebrows, the corrugator (the two little arms over the eyebrows) and the procerus (the muscle over the nose.)

Below, the actions of the corrugator and the procerus illustrated. To quote from the above book, "...the eyebrow lowers, especially the inner third...The eyebrows move closer together. A cashew shaped lump appears at the inner end of the eyebrow, with a curved, vertical crease along its inside edge (a), the "frown line". A small, crescent shaped dimple appears (b), above the middle of the eyebrow. This is where the muscle attaches to the skin and so becomes a low spot when the muscle contracts......"

I decided I needed to work on my (a) frownline and my (b) dimple. (I toyed with playing with the (c) vertical fold over the eyelid and the (d) hollow at the inner corner of the eye, but that would have meant changing the shape of the eyes more than I wanted to.) So I resculpted the eyebrows and went from this:

To this. I've emphasized the dimples and clarified and moved the frown lines more into the center. I've also tried to show how the muscle pulls the skin and bunches it up over the nose, spending many hours making faces at myself in the mirror and examining the wrinkles to do so! 

Below, a picture of the entire mask with its new eyebrows. I really like how the pattern of wrinkles in the center of the forehead echoes the shapes of the tines over them.

Now, I am really and truly in the home stretch with this mask. With any luck, my next post will show pictures of it finished!

Deer Antlers, Part 2

Here's the deer mask back in June. I felt pleased and thought all I needed to do was smooth and refine the antlers a little.

Ha, ha.



While I worked on bunny masks and looked at the deer mask just sitting on my workbench for the next several months, I realized the distance from the center of the mask to the tip of one antler was almost twice as far as to the other. Some asymmetry in deer antlers is to be expected, but not this much. Not cool.



So I cut the antler between the innermost and the three outermost tines and rotated the whole thing out a little. Not surprisingly, while the tip of the antler is more properly positioned, the tines are now tilted too far back. I stapled wads of tinfoil to the antler to use as an armature for new improved tines.





Then I took a photo of the mask, which I printed out and folded in half to check the relative positions of the two antlers to each other. The bottom edge of the left hand antler obviously need work, but otherwise, so far, so good.

Then I covered the new tines with Celluclay, cut off the old ones, and refined the rest of the antler a little bit.



I got rid of the lump on the underside of the left hand antler and...





OMG! How could I not have noticed before that the tip of the right ear is at least a half an inch higher than the left ear?? So I carved the bottom edge of the antler up a little...



... and brought up the edge of the left ear.



And here's where we are for the moment.

But wait, look, the second outermost tine on the right hand antler is about an inch longer than its conterpart on the left.... AAAGGGGHHHH!!!!

Positive Casting a Rabbit Mask with Celluclay

Usually I make masks by negative casting, that is, casting *inside* of a mold. But since I've been getting requests for rabbit masks faster than I can have a mold made, I've been making them by positive casting, ie, casting them *outside* of a form, in this case the original plasticene sculpture. Here's more about this method.

First, I liberally apply Vaseline to the sculpture as a release agent. Then I mix Celluclay (a kind of commerial paper mache pulp) and roll it out into approximately 1/8" thick sheets between two pieces of wax paper. These I put into the freezer for 8 minutes to make them less sticky and easier to work with, and then I peel the wax paper off and apply the sheets over my sculpture. I blend the edges of the sheets together and smooth out any major lumps, but otherwise I don't fuss too much over the texture. It's much easier to deal with after the Celluclay is dry.

The cast will need to be cut into pieces in order to remove it from the original sculpture. After I apply all the Celluclay, I make score marks along the parting lines with a clay tool. Otherwise, the Celluclay would be very difficult to cut apart when it is dry.

Then I set the mask in front of a fan to dry. Usually after an hour or two the Celluclay will start to feel leathery and I'll be able to add a little more detail back in with a wooden clay tool. After a day or two it is usually dry enough to remove from the sculpture.

Here's the beginnings of the cast, with the score lines pressed in:



Here's the cast with one of the pieces removed and the original sculpture showing underneath:



Here's all three pieces removed from the sculpture, ready for assembly:



At this point speed is of the essence. I reassemble the pieces as quickly as possible, as if I leave them for any time they will warp out of shape and not fit together well. I make holes along the edges of the pieces, lining them up with each other on either side of the seams. If the pieces are still a little damp I can make the holes with a bamboo skewer, if they've dried more thoroughly I'll need to use a drill.

Then I tie the pieces together using twist ties (I save these compulsively) and apply glue all along the seams:





I dry the cast on a wig stand or stuff it with wadded up newspaper to help it keep its shape. Then I fill in the seams and any thin spots with more Celluclay and let it dry again.

After I've gotten a sturdy shell on which to build, I begin to add texture and refine detail, both by adding back on with wet Celluclay or by carving with a Dremel. Here's the rabbit mask with the beginnings of hair texture, created by adding a thin layer of wet Celluclay and working it with a wooden clay tool:



Here's the mask hairier and more refined. The brown marks around the eyes are scorch marks from the Dremel.



Hairier and more refined still:



Then painted and finished! The Celluclay will need to be sealed before it is painted, as it will absorb humidity and warp like a son of a gun otherwise. I brush on a layer, inside and out, of slightly diluted Weldbond (a kind of waterproof PVA glue) to do this.



As you can see, in a positive cast, much of the original sculpture's surface detail (hair, wrinkles, etc) is lost and needs to be added back in. How much detail is lost depends on the material used- a lot with Celluclay, but less with leather and other types of paper mache. In a negative cast, surface detail is preserved by the mold. This is the major reason why I use molds to reproduce most of my masks. However the fur texture on this mask is fun to create by hand, and I play with the original rabbit sculpture a little every time I make a new positive cast, mostly tweaking its fit. Positive casting also allows me to go more quickly from an original sculpture to a wearable mask, since there isn't the intermediary step of having the mold made. Plus, it's always good to have more than one tool in the tool box!

Antlers

I have been working on the antlers for my deer mask for the past several months, in particular on attaching them in something less than a ridiculous manner. In my mind, a deer mask is largely an excuse for a human to wear antlers, so the antlers must look good. If the antlers look "off" the whole mask will look wrong.



(Gratuitous cute pic alert!!) I started making my antlers by tracking down this set of real whitetail antlers in the wilds of eBay. Whitetail antlers in particular are more on a human scale, as opposed to say, mule deer or fallow deer antlers, which can be huge. I made a paper mache version of these antlers by taking a positive cast of them in Celluclay. (For more about this method, see this post here.)



I also needed plenty of reference photos, for which this book (found on the clearance table at a local bookstore) was my main source. The picture on the cover is particularly helpful. (Gratuitous factoid alert- I also learned from this book that antlers are the fastest known growing tissue in the animal kingdom, growing at a rate of half an inch a day.)



And here we have the first attempt to attach the cast Celluclay antlers to the mask. If you compare this photo with the photo on the book above, you can see that the two short tines in the center of the rack are too short, spaced too widely and make too much of a "V" shape. You can also see that the two main beams are too horizontal. In the reference pic above, the beams are more vertical and have a gentle, shallow "C" shape.





Attempt number two. Here the beams are more upright and starting to take on some of that "C" shape, but the tips are too close together, nearly meeting over the center of the mask while on the real deer, the tips line up roughly with the middle of the ears. The ink sketch superimposed over the photocopy demonstrates this.







Attempt number three. The two middle tines have been lengthened and straightened, and the right hand antler has the "C" shape I've been trying for. However, two of the tines of the left hand antler are too short and straight, and something very funky is going on with middle of the beam. The photocopy/ink sketch of the top view shows that the curve of the beam needs to be tightened, and the end needs to move forward.







Attempt number four. I've lengthened and curved those two short straight tines on the left hand antler. I've also started to tighten the curve of the beam of the left hand antler, particularly towards the back of the mask, but in doing so I have once again moved the tip of the antler too close to the center of the mask. As the top view photocopy/ink sketch shows, it needs to be moved out again, and perhaps shortened.



And, here is the mask in its current state. At this point I'm happy with the overall look of the antlers, though the left hand antler has some weird lumpiness going on that needs to be addressed. Next I need to define and refine the mask's overall texture. Then, off to the moldmaker!

(Gratuitous factoid alert- on a trip to Wikipedia to check that my antler terminology above was correct, I learned it is now believed antlers act as parabolic reflectors, vastly improving the hearing of their wearers. I'm not kidding. We'll see if paper mache antlers can do the same!)

White Rabbit Mask Commission Part 2

During our last thrilling episode, our bold heroine had just finished a mask sculpture in a blazingly fast twenty one hours. Tune in this week to see if she can actually make a mask before Halloween!

I positive cast the mask in Celluclay over the plasticine rabbit sculpture and let it dry with the help of a fan. Then I cut it off, reassembled it, filled the seams and added the hair texture with more Celluclay. I just got a new batch of Celluclay and don't know if it's because it's been reformulated or just because it's fresh and new, but it was so much smoother and took texture so much better than it has before. (For more about positive casting, see this earlier post here)



Here is the mask with texture freshly applied. The hair on the nose and muzzle looks rather schnauzer-ish, so I later sanded it down.



Here is Brian the hapless hubby modelling the mask with the flash going off in his eyes. I've tamed the hair texture somewhat, as well as sanded down the eyes, the nose, and inside of the ears. At this point I deemed the mask was ready for paint!

The customer sent me this wonderful traditional Aurthur Rackam illustration for ideas for colors.



I love this color scheme, with the creamy/yellowy white, the sepia undershadings, and brownish/reddish eyes and nose. That is one seriously wierd looking bunny though!

And.. (drumroll please).. the finished mask!







I added just a tiny bit of metallic copper paint to the irises, so that the eyes will flash when the customer moves his head. Overall I'm really pleased with how this mask came out.

And... as an added bonus, this is the only Sans Souci mask to date that is really two masks for the price of one. What a deal!

White Rabbit Mask Commission Part 1

A challenge! A customer asked me if I could make an Alice in Wonderland White Rabbit mask for Halloween. I had only a month, and I usually need around a hundred hours to finish a sculpt, often more, and at least twenty or thirty to make an actual mask. I really didn't think I had time, but I had also wanted to make a rabbit mask anyway and see if perhaps, in the two or more years it's been since I've started a new sculpt, I'd become more proficient. So I took it on.



First, I made a clay sketch on a miniature armature, to get a basic idea of masses and shapes without having to shove around pounds of plasticine. I then used this little sketch as a reference for the full sized sculpture.



Here we are fifteen minutes into the big sculpt, and Arnold the Armature is picking up your signal loud and clear. Those little bitties on the sculpting table in front of him are snails, frogs and slugs that Isabelle sculpted after sneaking into my studio one day.



End of Day One. The armature is covered and the resulting lump is somewhat rabbit shaped.



End of Day 2. Looking a little more rabbit shaped. The little clay sketch I made at first is visible in the background.



End of Day 3. Ready for liftoff! Muzzle and brows have also been refined.



End of Day 5. Per customer's request, ears restrained, cheeks narrowed down and eyebrows refined some more. At this point I am pretty much satisfied with the sculpture.

During this project I discovered some amazing new time saving sculpting tools- the digital camera, the scanner, the printer and my lightbox. At the end of each day I would take pics of the mask, print them out in black and white, and sketch changes over them I'd want to make the next day. This helped me stay focused and saved hours of needless fiddling.





These are two sketches I did to show my customer ideas for new ears and cheeks. He opted for ears somewhat between these two possibilites.

I also found that if I took pics of the mask on one side and then kept the tripod and the stand in one place, I could spin the stand around and get a picture of the other side of the mask that when flipped over, would line up very closely to the first. Then I would print out both pictures, trace around the major lines in red, flip one picture over and then lay them down on my lightbox to see any significant differences between the two sides. This was very helpful if one feature looked "right" one one side but "off" on the other, I could tell right away what the difference was.



A pic of the right hand side of the mask, outlined in red, with an area from the left hand side superimposed in green over part of the ear.



A pic of the left hand side of the mask, outlined in red, with an area of the right hand side of the mask superimposed in green over the eye.

So I had a sculpture I liked after only twenty one hours of work, which is far as I'm concerned is unprecedented.

Next, casting and painting the mask!