Buck Grasshopper Mask

The Buck Grasshopper mask is one of those projects that began as a hasty pencil sketch (in my Doctor Who notebook) and somehow ended up looking remarkably similar to the original drawing!

The idea was fairly simple: take the face of a grasshopper and replace its antennae with antlers. Deer antlers. Imagine that silhouette!

Oh sure, the buck grasshopper is handsome. Majestic, even! But don't mistake that regal quality for approachability. Those horns contribute to epic scenes of combat, particularly during mating season.

My plan was to make the antlers appear 'real' to the extent that it was practical, and proportioned so they'd look appropriate on an average adult guy like myself. Life-size, for my size. Scaling up the face of a grasshopper to that same size could have resulted in a repellent horror, so I tried to simplify and streamline the design. I reduced the number of 'parts' on the grasshopper's face, retained only one set of palps, raised the point of attachment for the antennae/antlers, and significantly increased the size of the eyes. Emphasizing the alien, nonmammal qualities of the insect underscores their contrast with the organic shapes of the antlers. At least I hope so, and I also hope I did it without completely eliminating the cuteness.

The Buck Grasshopper is built from corrugated cardboard, newspaper, masking tape, stiff wire, paper mache (newspaper, flour, and water), a manila folder, and paper clay. Tools include scissors, a craft knife, an old toothbrush and a wire cutter.

Beginning the build, I made only the grasshopper's face, leaving the eye sockets open wide, and making receptacles for the maxillary palps and the antlers. Since those parts were going to leave the mask with spindly, pointed bits sticking up from the top and down from the bottom, I figured it would be best to build them separately, and wait til the last possible moment before permanently attaching them to the face.

I built the form by cutting pieces out of cardboard and taping them directly to a full-size mannequin head. This sort of modular build is nice because it's easy to pull off a part and alter it, until I've found an overall shape that I like. When it's ready, I can apply an exterior layer of paper mache while the face is still taped to the mannequin, so that it holds its shape when I peel it off.

This doesn't have much to do with the mask, so you can just skip on to the next step. All I'm doing here is celebrating!

When I moved in with my partner, I made a long-term investment. We financed a ten by twelve foot shed that sits right outside our back door. The shed is fully insulated, electrified, and has three windows. And it's my studio! It took until my late forties, but I finally have a studio.

The Buck Grasshopper was the first mask that I ever built in my new studio, and I took a few selfies to show off a little. Not because I was demonstrating anything especially important to the process, but because I was super excited to be working in my own space for the first time. Not sitting on my bed with a plastic drop cloth beneath me; not sitting on the couch under much the same circumstances. I could make as much mess as I wanted, and if I didn't feel like putting it all away at bedtime, I didn't have to!

As any paper mache enthusiast will tell you, the one question that we all have to grapple with eventually is, How do I make the maxillary palpus, a segmented protrusion associated with the olfactory sense?

Well, I'm sure there are as many answers as there are paper mache enthusiasts, but I'll tell you what I did. To create the segmented appearance of the palps, I rolled small strips of carboard into conical shapes that could be tucked one into the other. Running a length of wire down the middle, the palps could be manipulated to find an interesting, expressive shape.

Once I chose their final forms, I taped the segments into place and coated the palps with paper mache. When the flour paste was dry, I used clay to build up and sharpen the edges of the segments.

For each antler, I wrapped newspapers around a central wire, then bent them into approximate mirror images of each other. I made additional points from newspaper and tape, taking care to build the antlers equivalently but not equally. There should be a symmetry to the organic shapes, but I also wanted it to be obvious that they were formed individually.

When I was satisfied with their shapes, I covered them with paper mache and then refined all the formations with clay.

For the final texturing on the antlers, section by section, I covered them with a thin layer of soft paper clay. Then I dragged an old toothbrush along the length to create the suggestion of ridges. When it came time to paint, these tiny furrows would be a powerful tool.

The final big piece of business was to put the eyeballs on. For the oversize bulging eyes, I cut lots of long strips from a manila folder. When I made the face, I built a sturdy base for each eye, and now I started taping those strips to the base.

Interweaving the strips in a series of arches made a large eye dome. It was important to make the eyes fairly even, but that turned out to be easy. I didn't need to measure anything, I just (ahem) eyeballed it. The eyes on my buck grasshopper are disproportionately large because that makes them more adorable.

I sealed the domes with masking tape so they wouldn't collapse under the wetness of the flour paste, then covered it all over with paper mache.

In the natural world, there are some dramatic variations in the appearance of grasshoppers' eyes, and I'm also willing to bet that most people wouldn't know a grasshopper eye from another bug's. So I felt confident that I could take liberties with the design and still have it fall within the realm of 'grasshopper'.

I was already planning to paint the grasshopper bright green, because bright green grasshoppers have been scientifically proven to be the best kind. And I liked the contrast of green grasshoppers whose eyes range from red to brown, so I thought I'd start there. I'd also noticed that some grasshoppers had a dark spot, like a pupil, but others had more than one; some of those dark spots were crisp while others were soft and fuzzy.

All of this was in mind as I was still making the eyes, but first I had to address my practical needs. I cut a tall opening into each eyeball, in front of my own eyeline, which places it on the inside edge of the eye dome. That allowed me to clearly see in front of me, but it's a narrow field of vision. To open up the peripheral, I added a second, smaller opening on the outside edge of each dome. After placing my eye holes, I started concocting a clearer plan for how to incorporate them into the paint scheme.

Once the eye openings were finished off, I used clay to smooth and sharpen all the edges and finalize the face. Now all that was left to do was sand it all smooth, then glue in the antlers and maxillary palps, before undertaking the paint job.

With the mask completely assembled, I painted the whole thing white. Time to play!

Step one was painting the face with a base coat of light green. But before I added any detail, I wanted to sort out the eyeballs.

I envisioned them as a reddish brown, brightening at the base to help them kind of pop from the face. The two openings on each eye would be black, but I wanted to blend that dark space out into the brown color. Acrylic paint (particularly the cheap stuff) doesn't tend to do this as cleanly as oils might, but persistence and patience pay off. If I was shooting for a perfect illusion, I'd have used different tools!

The key for me is always figuring out how translucent each paint is, and layering the colors until their interplay feels right. And acrylic paints certainly aren't your only option! But I do enjoy showing people how many different things you can accomplish with them.

When it came to contouring the face, I kept things very subtle. Some hooker's green to darken the low spots, some yellow and white to brighten the high ground. The light green remained the dominant hue, but the plated, segmented appearance of the face was accentuated.

I started the antlers with a pale basecoat of oxide red mixed into white. From there I began to darken the antlers with deeper tones in the same family, but taking a dark umber to the bases of the points. There, and at the root of the antlers, I pressed the umber deeply into the grooves made by the toothbrush, and with a gentler hand I lightened the surrounding ridges. In this way the texture from the bristles is made to seem deeper and more dramatic than it actually is!

Repeating and adjusting this process, the antlers came to life. When I was satisfied with the color scheme, I took more of the pale base color – the white with just a touch of oxide – and very lightly applied it to some of the highest ridges using a dry fan brush.

The final touch was the contrasting varnish. I coated the face and eyes with an acrylic gloss, and the antlers with a matte finish. The effect is that the grasshopper's face has a shiny appearance like the shells of of certain insects, while the antlers seem surprisingly realistic! They probably wouldn't fool a doe grasshopper, but what are the chances of that even coming up?

I love how this thing looks! Is it a very weird creature? When I spend days and days making a mask, I get so used to it that when it's all said and done, I can't even tell anymore. I like to think when you first see the mask, you know you're looking at something weird, but that it takes a split second to figure out what's wrong with it. I could be way off about that though.

What I do know for sure is that (as we've previously mentioned, and has been cited in numerous peer-reviewed journals) bright green grasshoppers are the best ones of all, so I'm pretty stoked about the color. And I really like putting horns on stuff that doesn't normally have horns. This isn't the first time, and it surely won't be the last! Where will they go next? Maybe on a sasquatch? You have no idea! Neither do I!