first sketches toward masks

Here are some images from the planning/research carried out so far towards the proposed project of creating masks. The first page is funny. This was attempting to remember what the masks looked like before I found any images. As you can see the shape was broadly correct, but the individual features were reduced from mouth, nose, eyes, ears, and eyebrows/brow-ridge to just eyes and mouth, and greatly enlarged. This gave rise to an evil Bertie Bassett effect, which isn't what I was looking for.

Having gathered some images but not yet bought any clay I made sketches from some of the photos in my studio. Each sketch is a pair of images, a sketch from a photograph accompanied by a simplified full-face rendering of the features. The intention of the second rendering was to practice a potential approach to designing masks, and to help analyse the features.

The pair of images below are taken from the third photo down on this page.

The top pair of images here are from the same page, this time the fourth image down. Somewhere in the scanned notes I remark that this mask is interesting because there is what appears to be an animal head on top of the headpiece. I am also interested that the mouth (which appears to contain real teeth) is separated from the rest of the features.

The other pair of images are based on this photo. Interesting aspects of this mask are that the eyes are not round, helping give the face a melancholy appearance. It also features lines that almost begin to make this a representation of a recognisable face.

The final pair of images are from a photo by Irving Penn, in fact the first image I found that clearly showed the masks I was searching for. Although I'm fairly sure this was not the image in the Penguin Voices anthology (though I may be wrong) it's interesting that this mask is closest to my initial sketches from memory. It does however have a full set of facial features.

The text underneath is a brief analysis of what I've learned from the photos, and from making the sketches:

Some brief sketches to try + figure out what features seem to be common to most of the masks I've seen, and how those features are distributed. The eyes are normally close together relative to the size of the mask to facilitate seeing out. The nose varies from high to low. The mouth appears to frequently be off-centre. The ears are simplified and cartoonish. There is usually a brow ridge that also acts to delineate the upper part of the face. Hopefully the sketches will also help me in planning my own masks.

The mask opposite top is interesting in that the mouth is separated from the rest of the face, and in having what appears to be an animal head on top of its head.

The final images are a couple of sketches following the those above, attempting to design masks. These will not be turned into masks. In fact although I intend to make more designs, the purpose is more to find ways of creating masks that will be distinctly contemporary and western. Or at least clearly distinct from the original masks that inspired the project. The likelihood is that actually beginning to make the masks will be very different, and will uncover things that I haven't thought of previously.