Day 23 of the '29 Faces' Challenge: A Student's Wolf Face-Mask Project:

Day 23 of the '29 Faces in February' Challenge!   And whew, we are definitely in the home-stretch by now.  Once I hit the 'publish' button for this post, there will  officially  be less than a week of Faces left to do....  Huzzah!

As for today's face project, the Face I'm posting is going to be a little....different:

Student's Mask Project

While this face is technically my student's project, I was instrumental as to the creation of it, and so I'm making the executive decision that it 'counts'.  Allow me to explain:  I have a high school-aged student that comes over on Thursday afternoons for private art tutoring, and together we have been working on making a mask for a big ballet recital she has coming up.  There is to be a dance segment  based on 'Little Red Riding Hood', with my student, a wonderful little artist in her own right, having offered to make a paper mache mask for the person in the role of 'Big Bad Wolf'.   There were some constraints.  The director wanted the mask to be especially light weight, and to have nothing that would cover the mouth of  the dancer -- and so my student and I set out to design something accordingly, starting from scratch.  Here are progress pics of  our mask making project: 

We began by building up a wolf-shaped form, shaping and constructing the ears and the 'mane' from light cardboard, adding sculptural elements and covering the whole thing entirely on both sides with duct tape:

Wolf-shaped Form, covered in duct-tape

 Once the form, or 'base', was completed, it was time to apply the papier mache layers to it:

Applying the paper mache layers.

Wet and gooey.

Wet Paper Mache Wolf Mask... (along with a papier mache panda, another student's project)

The paper mache layers were applied over several weekly sessions.  Finally today the mask was thick and dry enough to be removed from the wolf-shaped base/mold:

The papier mache doesn't stick to the duct tape, and so with a little gentle coaxing, it lifts off.

Gently pulling the mask away.

Off it comes -- good job!

And...it looks great!  What a lovely Face for Day 23...!

Paper Mache Wolf Face Mask, almost finished....!

Now all that is needed is to paint it, which we'll do next week.

And also for fun, since we had some time to kill once the mask was removed (and we'd smoothed over the raw edges with the last bit of papier mache), I introduced my student to the fun that is the ACEO (Art Cards, Editions and Originals)...:

Sketching her ACEO

A cute wee fairy -- how sweet!  (to be finished with watercolor another day)