Mask-Making

So my first attempt to make a leather mask kinda failed spectacularly, mostly due to the bit where I tried to carve everything on the wrong side of the leather.

Then I decided it was scrap and started trying various tools out on it, and wound up gouging right through the leather a couple of times.

Then, because I still wanted to see how the whole “veggie tanned leather” thing works, I wet it down again and clipped it to a cheap-ass mask form, and damned it if didn’t turn the thing into a mask!

It’s still total crap with holes and random lines and squiggles and gouges, but something about being in the shape of a mask makes it…I don’t know…suddenly it’s a thing. I suspect it has something to do with it being a kind of face, and faces poke you in parts of the brain that you don’t really get control over.

Still. Crap piece of leather…mask. Insomuch as I understand magic, that’s it, right there. I’m kinda wowed.

My second attempt (on the right side, this time!) is drying on the form as we speak. I have done plenty wrong, and the lines are kinda irregular, but this one I will probably seal and paint. It’s a very simple shape—a couple of swoopy points on the outer edges and around the eyes—which if I were a certain sort of person, I would probably try to classify as a sylph or a spirit, but being me, I won’t.

Anybody got any suggestions on good things to seal a mask with, for acrylic paint? My inclination is to use clear gesso or matte medium, so if either of those make leather explode, now would be a good time to mention it.

Originally published at Tea with the Squash God. You can comment here or there.