Masks and other Art

[Buster's Uncle]

M has come through with some content...

Masks

[Buster's Uncle]

There is a thing you have to do in collaborating, where you take what you get, because your partner has free will.  M has not painted anything, or worked on the website, or gotten any of a number of things done that I've waited a long time for.  What she did was generate another video about masks last night.

Six Reasons for Using Masks in Performance

She likes poser art and she likes making videos.  It was a pleasant surprise when I got on this morning.  I'll take it...

[Buster's Uncle]

Second time this week that I looked down and noticed something wrong with a mask in a box in my room - first time was the green horned skull, which was warped badly and had a tear along the teeth on one side.  Repaired and reinforced days ago.  Yesterday, I noticed one of the wrestling masks almost crumpled up.  Sitting on a face to straighten out, and I probably ought to reinforce it, too, or it won't stay straightened out.

And I come before you today, my friends, to show you how very, very right the wrestling mask looks on the right face.

That's the ring of authenticity, right there.  Looks like one time when Wahoo McDaniels -who had a nose just like that, and just about exactly the same weight and face-shape- snuck back in after being banned.

[Geo]

There is a thing you have to do in collaborating, where you take what you get, because your partner has free will.  M has not painted anything, or worked on the website, or gotten any of a number of things done that I've waited a long time for.  What she did was generate another video about masks last night.

Six Reasons for Using Masks in Performance

She likes poser art and she likes making videos.  It was a pleasant surprise when I got on this morning.  I'll take it...

The credits were mercifully short.
And the video certainly states a truth thousands of years old. One only need to look at Greek theater performances for that.

[Buster's Uncle]

She left out the transformative effect of a mask turning the actor from an individual into something more universal and archetypal, an embodied idea.  Tsk.

[Buster's Uncle]

Resolved to beef up the Mask Presentation.

Have plans to make additions to the lists of Types of Masks and Uses for Masks - with videos!

I have created a monster - thank goodness.

[Buster's Uncle]

Holy crap.  I win.  Mylochka said to me, about an hour ago, "I need to paint some masks."

Well I got a stack of 12 unpainted new masks from the last two months and three days, dear; I will totally hook you up.

-We were talking about her commenced project to expand on and improve the mask lecture page with a couple of videos expanding greatly on two points where her lecture notes were thin.  She started thinking about a painting process video.  I did have the integrity to tell her I took pics after each session the last time and wrote them up here - I believe she considers that mighty low resolution, and my comments and speculations about where she was going with this and that beside the point of a tutorial-ish process vid.

We've got an appointment to watch Thor: Ragnarok after I've done cat feed at sunset; I'm carrying the pile to the same table as before -all her paint and brushes are still out there from Fall 2017- so I can say I did when I see her in a couple hours...

[Rusty Edge]

Well, I hope that it makes her feel better.
If not, I hope that it provides her a distraction.
Maybe that doesn't make sense to everybody, but it should to somebody with tinnitus.

[Buster's Uncle]

The hissing is pretty loud today, at that.

-Having reviewed the pics I posted from last time painting, they are indeed, little help - she didn't know I was photoing behind her, and way too many disappeared with nothing of how they turned out.

When I picked up the recent mask stack, it was, correction, lucky 13 masks, most of them devils.  I also un-stole so much paint I had to use my shirttail to do it in one trip.  She's actually been down to look.  Looks like painting might actually happen.  She asked me what I'd like, which would have been more helpful if we thought at all alike about design and decoration; she likes busy argle-bargle, and does beautiful stuff that way, while I make a face and think in terms of it looking like a face.  "I was just thinking red devils" I said.  Well, that thing I said yesterday about taking what I can get.  Variety makes it more interesting, "but painted like just a mask sometimes would be nice" I finished...

[Buster's Uncle]

Attn: Uno.

I'd like some input about what you see a really good Plague Doctor mask looking like.  I've asked Mylochka the same question.  I have a pretty good simple eagle beak -you've seen me and young Buster wearing crudely-painted examples- and I could just do that as a half-mask and be done with it, but I'd like to do something nicer, in part because it also fits into our years-old ambition to do up a commedia del arte' set.

So, more beak or cartoon nose?  Poking straight, or angled down over the mouth?  Any clever ideas about incorporating lenses very cheaply?  (The best notion I've got is lowest-power magnifying/reading glasses from the dollar store -round lenses if available for $5 or less- just pop 'em out and mache into the mask, if the wearer can take the blurry vision.)

Anything else, Plague Doctor-wise, I haven't mentioned?

[Buster's Uncle]

Well good news.  Momma's sisters are here for lunch, so I threw out the Plague Dr. lenses problem to the three of them, and Aunt Pokey, a trained and accomplished artist herself, suggests cutting out of the double-curved part near the top of two-liter soda bottles.  Tricky to do a neat round cut, but a good balance between sturdy and flexible, no serious vision distortion, free material we go through regularly, so very available - and I meant to embed the edges in the mask as I build it, so the they need to be close, but don't require anything like perfection in the cutting out.

We go through one or two clear bottles a week, and one or two green bottles.  Provided it looks okay when I actually try it, maybe this conundrum is solved.

[Buster's Uncle]

Mylochka and Mom say sunglass lenses, instead.  The teardrop-shaped pair attached is the best that have been thus far volunteered for sacrifice...  I haven't decided whether to turn the points in or out, but I think pointing horizontal is best if I use these, not least to break up that top edge alignment that'd say glasses...

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm trying something a little new today.

All along, I've been encouraging the latex to form thicker ridges over some key details.  I had fair luck extending a tendon along Dixie's muzzle that way.  And well, it struck me that that Pharaoh's face was taking a lot longer than the headdress, despite me doing a poor job of building up the eye-liner details, instead of letting the latex smooth them out to oblivion.  So I'm trying a few layers of just the ridges, to mitigate against that smoothing tendency, and more neatly at that.

Attn: Uno.

I'd like some input about what you see a really good Plague Doctor mask looking like.  I've asked Mylochka the same question.  I have a pretty good simple eagle beak -you've seen me and young Buster wearing crudely-painted examples- and I could just do that as a half-mask and be done with it, but I'd like to do something nicer, in part because it also fits into our years-old ambition to do up a commedia del arte' set.

So, more beak or cartoon nose?  Poking straight, or angled down over the mouth?  Any clever ideas about incorporating lenses very cheaply?  (The best notion I've got is lowest-power magnifying/reading glasses from the dollar store -round lenses if available for $5 or less- just pop 'em out and mache into the mask, if the wearer can take the blurry vision.)

Anything else, Plague Doctor-wise, I haven't mentioned?

?  I'm caught up on the internet promotion for the moment, and I've got nothing serious in the pike but Plague Dr.  I need a project right now, and haven't gotten a straight answer from Mylochka yet, either...

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay; instead of simmering in my own juices waiting for input -I mentioned it to Buster as next and she pronounced herself excited, so her, too- I think I'll pop those sunglass lenses, get out the eagle beak, and make a simple test P Dr. on my face.  (The beak appliance was made to fit over that nose, so no variables but working in the lenses.)

[Buster's Uncle]

Correction; this is the face it was made on.

Today's new comic book day, so I'm not in a tearing hurry, but this is standing by for when I catch up and get bored...  Mylochka says this is really all she has in mind; the beak and make the lens inclusion look good...