Primary materials: Paper napkins, glue, acrylic paint.
My main artistic goal here was a sense of movement and asymmetry. Also, whenever I had a decision to make, I opted to put less material on rather than more—which is not how I typically do things.
When a mask has eye-holes with no mesh in them, if they’re too big, I find they look silly because too much of the wearer’s face is exposed. But sometimes larger eye holes look better on the mask itself when the wearer is taken out of the equation. This issue can be solved to some degree by putting mesh in the eyes, so the wearer is hidden. Although this is not the first mask I have made with mesh, it is the first where I specifically made the eyes larger knowing I’d fill them in with mesh later on.
I lightly sanded this with a random-orbital sander, sanded more by hand, and smoothed certain areas with a rotary tool.
For painting I did a slightly simplified version of something I have already done. It was a very straightforward and I’m happy with the results. The naturally rough texture of the papier-mache is perfectly suited for old bone colors.
I sewed elastic straps into the slots on either side of the mask. You can’t see the straps in these pictures because they’re curled up inside the mask to keep them out of the way.