Becoming a Death Eater - Part 3

Dried Mold

Day 3 into my Death Eater Mask project. After waiting the required 24 hours for the plaster to dry I was ready to start the fun part, sculpting the mask.  Even though this is the part I have been most excited about, I am also a little nervous.  So far there have been a few bumps along the way but I finally have a solid mask.  Now I just have to make sure I dont mess it up!

I have done a fair bit of searching around on the internet for some reference images.  I was lucky enough to find a site with pictures of all of them over at kaiseremblog.  This turned out to be really helpful since I could see various version in one place.

Adding the PaperClay

I was not 100% sure of the look I was going for but I had decided on a few things;  I wanted the mouth piece to be a bit different, and I wanted strong cheek bones and brows.  Before I could get to any of that I had some prep work to do.  As you can see from the first image, the dried mask was a bit rough.  Paying a bit more care when applying the plaster strips I might have been able to start out with a smoother surface.

After a slow start with the PaperClay I eventually found a good method of working with it.  Though the directions dont mention it, keeping your fingers damp is the key.  I filled up a ramekin with some water to keep handy.  Using a small brush I also lightly coated the mask with some water as I began applying the PaperClay.  At this point my only goal was to cover the entire surface and get the face smoothed out.  With as much material as it was taking to cover the surface I stated to think I was going to use the entire package.  I ended up having at least 1/4 left.

Assembling the mouth piece

Once I had the entire surface covered I started working on my mouth piece.  The PaperClay is easy to work with but I needed something to support the weight across the open area of the mouth.  I took a little break and paid a visit to Starbucks and left with a Venti coffee and a few extra stir sticks.  These had the right width I was looking for and are pretty light weight.  I used a pair of snippers to cut them down to size and angle the edges.  Once I got everything cut I used a hot glue gun to attach all of the sticks together.

I ended up having to build up the area around the mouth so my newly created mouth piece had a good flat surface to be attached to.  Over this I applied additional Paper Clay to give it some shape.

Finished with the basic look

Now I ad some more waiting to do.  The package says the material takes from 1-3 days to dry depending on the thickness.  We shall see!  In the next post I will cover sanding and applying the facial carvings found on the Death Eater masks.