Eric Makes Masks

The Blue Spirit

8/22/2014

The Blue Spirit 2014 / Avatar: The Last Airbender - Neoprene and Acrylic Paint

It's been a while since I posted anything on this blog - and by "a while", I mean far too long. I have been more than busy since I posted last. One of my favourite projects I have worked on has been my take on The Blue Spirit mask from Avatar The Last Airbender.
I am a huge fan of this show and have wanted to make this mask for a while. This was probably my most challenging, but also most rewarding mask to make to date. The first cast of this mask was made for a close friend, and fellow Avatar fan. Here are some pictures of the mask, plus some of the sculpting process.

These are the some pictures of the final sculpt, right before I cast it in plaster. I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the process! But are some finished shots below. The mask is made from neoprene, painted with acrylic paint, and has black see through fabric over the eyes and mouth.

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Bali

3/2/2013

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I've just returned from beautiful Bali where I was lucky enough to study mask carving with master wood carvers. What an experience! Bali is a place that is primed for cultural interaction, and I'm happy to say that I was treated to a very unique version of that. I met some fellow artists and participated in a program run by the Dell'arte International School of Physical Theatre. This wonderful program places artists with local and highly skilled Balinese artists who invited us into their homes to teach us centuries - old skills. I joined artists/actors/teachers/designers and fellow mask makers from all over the world.

Bali is an enchanting place, filled with incense and offerings. It's also a highly ritualized place with an estimated 20 000 temples which are used almost daily. This culture of ritual is what drives the art of Bali, although you certainly can find enough finely carved tourist nik naks to fill a house with. Masks play an integral part of ritual in Bali and help tell the stories of Bali's living history.

~ Here's a picture of a mask shop in Mas, a town near Ubud, which is famous for it's mask makers. We called this one the Indiana Jones shop, since it was cobwebbed, dusty and full floor to ceiling with masks. A mask makers dream!

Here I am pictured with some other mask carving students carving away in the home of our teacher, Nyoman Setiawan. Mask carving in Bali is done sitting on the ground and usually involves holding the wood between your feet while you use a mallet and a variety of chisels to make shapes in the wood. It ain't easy! Lots of mistakes were made, and most days at least a few of us had some nicks from the super sharp chisels.

It took a while for me to get a handle on the subtractive process of wood carving, which is very different from my usual additive method of sculpting and building up.

Here's the mask I was carving in a late stage of the process, right before I put the eyebrows and moustache on, and below you can see the finished product along with the other masks from my fellow students.

~ We also had the chance to do some mask work, and here I am pictured with another student playing around in some Bondres (clown) masks.

Here I am performing the dance of the Prime minister
during our final recital. We had daily dance classes where
we learned a simplified version of a portion of the Topeng, a dance normally performed during ceremonies. These dances are highly detailed and technical. A small look made with the mask brings it to life and makes it pop! "Small, small!" our teacher would say as we learned how the smallest movement can say much.

My time in Bali was absolutely incredible and I am already craftily planning my return. Some of my top experiences were attending private ceremonies to see mask dances performed for their true function, riding around on a scooter like the Balinese and eating endless amounts of fried rice.

A month in Bali is barely enough time to scratch the surface of a place with a culture that is highly coded and very complex. I couldn't ask for a better place to learn new skills (the palm trees helped). It can take a lifetime to truly master Balinese mask carving, but I'm in no real rush. As the Balinese say "Pelan, Pelan" - slowly, slowly.

The view from my corner of the mask making room.

Our dance teacher Gustu, performing in a duo at a new moon ceremony.

The ubiquitous tiered rice paddie.

Me with Nyoman, my mask carving teacher. He was always laughing.

A statue of Tualen, a clown servant from Balinese dramas, overgrown with moss and guarding the entrance to a temple. One of my favourite characters.

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Indiegogo Success!

11/30/2012

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We did it! I'm thrilled to announce that my fundraising campaign was a huge success! I raised a total of $3830 through my Indiegogo page, and blasted through my initial goal of $3700. I couldn't have done it without a bunch of help from incredible family and friends, as well as a few supportive strangers who really believed in what I'm to. I have many people to thank and you can check them all out here, but to anyone who contributed let me say it again: THANK YOU!! For a list of all my contributors please check out my new Donors page

With this money I will be able to fund my journey to Bali, Indonesia with the Dell'arte School of Physical Theatre, where I will be learning how to carve wooden masks in the traditional Balinese style. I've been selected to travel there this January with a handful of people from all over the world, including places like South Africa, the USA, Moldova, India and others from Canada along with me. Check out more about the program here: www.dellarte.com

After I return from this once in a lifetime opportunity I'm going to be hard at work using my new skills in my custom mask making endeavours, and passing along unique knowledge to children in the workshops I teach. I'm so excited to get started.

I'm also very excited to announce the launch of my online shop! I'll be selling lots of cool items, including performance masks, decorative masks, and other original art pieces I've created. The first item for sale is the first release from my "Famous Faces from Other Lives" original figurine series I created. Click on the photo to find out more!

I've got lots to do before my trip, but I'll be updating the blog before I go, and maybe even putting some more items up for sale!
Stay tuned to see all my mask making adventures in Bali!

After traveling the world carrying little more than a backpack and a shining face, Sam Seymour Samuelson (the second) finally settled down as an animal whisperer in the Orang-utan filled jungles of Northern Sumatra, where he was known by the local children as "the Smiling Man"...for obvious reasons. He is remembered here in this likeness

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Eric Makes Masks in Bali!

10/7/2012

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In January I will be travelling to Bali, Indonesia to learn how to make masks with master mask carvers!
I am very excited to announce the launch of my fundraising campaign.
Getting to Bali is huge undertaking and to help me get there, I'm reaching out for contributions large and small. Anything helps and there are great perks available! Your contribution will help me teach children amazing mask making techniques from Bali, while allowing me to grow my business. Click on the link below for more info!

Here's one of my perks available for your contribution! Check it out, I call him "The Smiling Man". Click on the above link to see how he can be yours! He's a great bookend, paper weight or shelf companion and is guaranteed to make you smile.

This is my first international research and development trip and I'm very excited to learn. I will have the amazing chance to learn how Balinese mask makers do what they do. Mask makers from this region are some of the best in the world, and I'm so lucky to get the chance to go.

I will be travelling with the world renowned Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre based out of California.
Check out some more pictures of Balinese masks below, or find out more about the Dell'Arte School .

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Workshops!

7/30/2012

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Over the past month I had the great opportunity to teach kids how to make masks in a few places! The first was part of Children's Peace Theatre's Peace is Possible workshop series.

Pictured here are some of the workshop participants with their great paper mask creations.

And below are some the masks they made up close. We had some animals, and even a Poseidon mask, which were all very impressive.

Then I moved on to teach a large workshop of about 100 kids aged 4 - 12 with the awesome campers at Allenby Daycare! We had enough time in the workshop that I got to teach them how to paper mache and paint.

Here on the left is the example mask I made for the workshop. All made of paper, glue, tape and paint! I'm not exactly what kind of animal this is, but some of my favourite creations are made up creatures that are a mix of different types of animals. Some of the kids called it a WolfMouse or a BearFox.

I love teaching these workshops because I not only get to teach kids how to make masks but I get to come up with masks like this one.

The kids had so much fun that they left me some really nice messages on the whiteboards when I arrived in the morning. You can see them below, as well as a picture of the HUGE table full of their masks drying in between stages.

And to end this post, here's a bit of mask inspiration. I'm becoming obsessed with Balinese masks and have some big news about why coming very soon! Stay tuned. Until then enjoy this wild picture.

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Pantalone!

6/10/2012

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Here is the newest mask I'm working on now. It's a Pantalone mask. This is a larger version of a small Pantalone mask I made which you can see here >
Pantalone is a character in Commedia Dell'Arte and was one of the first masks I ever made, so it's really fun to return to him. He's basically an old miser. He's one of the principal characters in almost all Commedia sketches. I like to think Mr. Burns from the Simpsons is a sort of Pantalone. He has a lot of money and his servants are always playing tricks on him. Meanwhile, he is usually trying to woo a younger female character. He's definitely one of my favourite characters.

One of my first tiny pantalone masks

In these pictures you can get a sense of my process.
I usually start with a sketch, and then move on to sculpting, and then make a plaster casting over that. Then I'll paste layers of paper maché inside that casting which later becomes the mask.

Plaster cast!

Here's the (almost) complete mask. I'm going to trim down the eyebrows and paint him a more neutral brown colour.

Just for fun I'm going to end this blog post with a couple old pictures I found. This is a picture of me selling my masks on the streets of Galway, Ireland. These are some of my first masks! I sold them to tourists and passers by. I remember that was the summer that Iron Man the movie was released and I made a bunch of little Iron Man masks for kids. It was a great time. I still use the stool that I'm sitting on in this picture in my workshop to this day. If you look close enough you can Dottore, Pantalone and Arlecchino in the top row.

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Mask Making at Wychwood Barns

5/18/2012

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Recently I had the awesome opportunity to participate in the Uth Daze Festival as part of bcurrent's rock.paper.sistahz festival and National Youth Arts Week. I ran a mask making station on a beautiful spring afternoon. Kids and parents rolled through the park at Wychwood Barns and before they knew it they were making awesome paper masks.

The event was great, I highly recommend going next year. My mask making was only one of the things offered. There was origami and live performances as well as face painting (which is mask making of a different sort).

Basically the kids made a simple paper mask out of cardstock and added things like ears, noses and designs to make wearable art pieces. Here's a picture of a happy young mask maker with the finished product!

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Upcoming Mask Making Workshop

5/3/2012

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What a busy time around the workshop! There's a lot going on. I'm running a show that I co-directed for Theatre Caravel and making plans for an upcoming Fringe show. And when I'm not doing that I'll be teaching a few mask making workshops.

The first is a paper mask making workshop for an amazing festival called Uth Daze. Here's a little but more about it:

"Uth Daze is a 3-day FREE festival from May 4th-6th 2012 at the Artscape Wychwood Barns in Toronto & an official National Youth Arts Week event! This multi-arts event happens as part of b current’s 11thannual rock.paper.sistahz Festival, and features workshops for school and community groups, Up-Cycling: A Fashion Event, the Jr Juke Joint improvised performances, and an All Day Experience of creative activities, workshops, and performances for kids, youths and all!"

Click on the poster to find out even more. This mask making workshop is a really fun workshop where I'll teach some easy mask making skills that everyone can use. Plus you get a great paper mask to show off.

While all that is going on, I've also started work on some reproductions of some little sculptures of heads I've made. Remember that smiling guy I posted pictures of a while ago? Well, now he's got a perfect replica made of high quality resin. Every detail is captured - it's incredible. As a mask maker I'm obsessed with faces so it's only natural that I would start to sculpt these little personalities.

I'm going to post a series on the making of this guy, because it was a lot of fun. These little heads will be for sale online starting soon. I'm in the process of setting up on online store which will have these guys as well as some masks for sale. Until then if you're interested in buying one, send me a message and I can send one along.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of the newest addition to the family of little heads. Enjoy!

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Masks in the Classroom!

3/30/2012

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Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Gr. 6
art class at Bond Lake Public School to talk about
my masks and had great time! I brought in a variety of my
masks, including the very first masks I ever made.
The kids were very responsive and had lots of questions.

I visited them to talk about my experience mask making as part of their mask making unit in class. They were hard at work making paper masks and I lent some of my knowledge and experience making my own masks. When I asked them what they were making their masks out of, they were shocked to hear I made them out of the same things - paper and glue!

I also taught them a bit about the history and significance of masks across cultures. They were able to give me lots of good examples of modern masks and their importance today.

All in all I had a great time chatting with the class and they had so many questions about mask making I was happy to answer. I loved showing them that mask making is still a vibrant art form that is a very important part of shared culture the world over.

Plus, they had the chance to try on some of my masks and bring them to life.

If you're interested in a class visit I'd love to talk with you about bringing my masks to your school. Send me an e-mail to ericmakesmasks@gmail.com with the subject Class Visit.

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First Dragon Mask

2/13/2012

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I've been toying around with the idea of a dragon mask for a long time. Almost the better part of 4 years to be exact. So, recently I finally finished a prototype of one. I started this prototype so long ago that I've since learned techniques that I wish I knew when I first had this idea. But I soldiered on out of the desire to just finish it. Having done so, I'm glad I did. Now I'd love to make a whole family of these masks. In the future I would change a few things about it based on what I learned in the process, but it's my largest mask to date and was a joy to build. Here are some pictures chronicling the final steps in the process.

Below are two pictures from the dragon's early life. The one on the left is me wearing the mask after it's initial construction. You can see it lacks the head piece which I added on later. I experimented with bed sheets, air dry modelling clay, and made the frame out of clothes hangers. Oh, and the head strap is part of an old bike helmet. It's adjustable!

Above on the right is the base layer of paint, which I would later paper mache over for a smoother, more even skin texture. On the left are the first pictures of the beginning stages of the head piece.

A great mask making teacher of mine taught me to always make a mock up of what you're working on because for the most part, you can work out a lot of kinks in that first initial process. The first picture here is the mock up, which gives me an idea of it's general shape.

Next is the wire frame, which, for lack of a better method, I attached with tape! Effective and cheap. Once attached, it was a just a matter of putting layer after layer of paper mache over top of the frame. Below you can see the whole process. I applied it in a great sheet and then once dry, I cut out the shape of the head piece. As I worked with the mock up I realized I wanted this piece to look sort of like a flame. It's the finishing touch to this mask, so I wanted it to stand out.

A few layers of paint later, and I had my very first dragon mask. Keep a look out for more dragon masks to come. After this experience I think I might be making many more.

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Eric MAkes Masks