Tribal Mask

Created a wall hanging Tribal Mask out of air drying modelling clay for a uni project.

Air drying clay, acrylic colours, some thread and a lot of elbow grease and patience.

I had a crude idea of the mask shape i was going for, in accordance I created a mould using household supplies.

I wrapped a water bottle with cloth which was further wrapped in layers of saran wrap. The cloth served as a compliant medium between the bottle and saran wrap, I was worried that if I used a rigid mould the mask would break at the time of removal (if the clay perfectly mimicked the body profile it would have resulted in a tight fit, making removal extremely difficult), hence the implementation of cloth. The saran wrapped helped keep a clean and continuous profile.

I created the basic face structure by:

1) Kneading and rolling the clay to get the right thickness and volume that i needed.

2) Pressing it onto the mould, and modelled the clay to get the shape I wanted.

3) Used a cutter to cut out the excess clay and get a finer edge finish.

4) Added in the facial details and set to dry (Propped it up on some objects I had lying around)

After roughly 24 hours of drying, I removed the mask from the mould and treated the cracks by adding in some more clay. Once the mask had fully dried, I painted it using acrylic paints. I used yellow as a base and took inspiration from tribal masks online to create the more subtle patterns and features.

Luckily for me, my parents love to collect masks and artefacts, so finding a place on the wall for it came naturally.