Masks and other Art

[Buster's Uncle]

I cannot recall or find a dedicated thread here for my masks and Mylochka's collaborative painting of same, so I thought it was past time.

I do now have a Masks folder where I'll look for it, and that's going to end up saving me a lot of aggravation, eventually.

Below is the first thing I ever did in plaster, back in 1988.  Most of the people in the class did lame crap with paper plates.  You will be shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that I totally got an A.  It doesn't fit me all that well, because I caved the cheeks in a little as part of the face-shaping.  Mylochka says it's still recognizably me, which I can't believe.

The third is a paper mache impression I did of it a teeny bit more recently.  Looking at the base, you can imagine how much fun it was to separate and mend the back of the horns intact, so between that and having fondness for the somewhat fragile original, I may not do any more copies.  I don't think it's one of M's most inspired paint decoratings ever, but the little dancing devil silhouettes on the face are pretty teh awesome.

I'm the first to admit that this isn't a fantastic mask, taken as the mask I made and not Mylochka's excellent paint job.  I was starting to resolve, towards the end of the last burst of making, that I needed to be making everything decidedly thicker and more inclined to hold shape around the edges, and stop trying to show off how thin and light I could go and still have a solid result.

I note that for anything I photographed myself, I still have the ridiculously-oversized original pics w/o size/cropping and whatever processing I deemed needed, so detail shots are very doable where anyone asks for a closer look.

And for good measure, attached is one Mylochka shot all fancy-like, that's also the only other pic I have readily to hand.  I need to just go through the three boxes near my office and shoot everything ad-hoc as I did above...

There would definitely be some interest, not least on the part of youse fathers of four year-olds, if I had Mylochka photograph the next time I made anything and wrote up my process/techniques, wouldn't there?

[Buster's Uncle]

Hmm.  Since I did this for six pages at the Pond in 2011, let's see how hosting on Solver's nickel works out:



Eeexcellent.  I believe this one now hangs on one of Uno's walls.  He will confirm that it doesn't feel very substantial and wants to be wavy around the edges a little, but obviously, Mylochka did a very nice pseudo-Mayan decoration.

[Buster's Uncle]

Here's a group shot of a bunch of recent ones at the time...  This one embiggens when you click - and many will make a popup window for your closer look needs.



I'm definitely saving copies of everything as I go through that thread.  For some reason, I've a disturbing lack of faith in my friend Solver...

[Buster's Uncle]

It IS the one on Uno's wall - here it is modeled by one of my favorite models...

[Rusty Edge]

 

[Unorthodox]

Hmm.  Since I did this for six pages at the Pond in 2011, let's see how hosting on Solver's nickel works out:



Eeexcellent.  I believe this one now hangs on one of Uno's walls.  He will confirm that it doesn't feel very substantial and wants to be wavy around the edges a little, but obviously, Mylochka did a very nice pseudo-Mayan decoration.

what year was that?  I have a pic of Talia in it. 

[Unorthodox]

Duh, you already posted her pic...

[Unorthodox]

Lifecast of my ugly mug sent in return

[Buster's Uncle]

what year was that?  I have a pic of Talia in it.

2011.

It IS the one on Uno's wall - here it is modeled by one of my favorite models...

Duh, you already posted her pic...

[Unorthodox]

[Buster's Uncle]

Yep.  Saved that one today.  I'm logged in over there right now - there were two attachments I wanted, I PM headhunted Arnelos, (should I do Big Dork?), I'm updating some files in Downloads, I need to search your Halloween Workshop thread, where I no doubt posted more masks - and I'm considering a well-crafted troll in Site to taunt the staff into getting off their dead behinds and doing something to stop letting me prove my superiority over here quite so clearly and easily...  I probably won't work through that list tonight...

[Unorthodox]

I have some more pics of your masks somewhere, but I'd spend days searching. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Drat.  This was attached on the very first page of  Uno's Halloween workshop, and so I'm logged in again.  There's definitely going to be some stupid, stupid Staff Room drama - if it didn't start last night already.  -And at that, I've kept Solver informed of what I'm up to.

(Still planning to shoot everything in the boxes, so I hope to put something new up today.)

Below is Buster and a certain relative modeling some pieces they collaborated on.  She painted.

[Buster's Uncle]

Uno, since you encouraged me in the past to post pictures of my sculpture-type work here, this is a shot I call Diego, Diego & Diego. Left to right is Dora the Explorer's friend, my sister's dog and a mask I made of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera- also known as Frieda Kahlo's husband. The latter two are connected, as I created the mask for a show about Frieda Kahlo my sister was putting on.

I sculpted his face in paper pulp and painted it. Then I made the mask in a more conventional paper mache' process on that base, and painted the result with colored latex. I use at least a thin coating of latex on all my mask work- it results in not only waterproofing, but a stronger, more flexible mask. I've not done a lot with latex only, but have done a little.

[Metaliturtle]

That looks like a grumbledawg