Making a Commedia del Arte Mask

Aim of Task: To learn about Commedia del Arte character masks, to know the characteristics of our specific character mas and to make the Commedia del Arte mask that corresponds to our character (Pantalone in my case).

Description of Task: First, we had to get an idea of what our character mask should look like. Therefore, we investigated about the characteristics in our masks and drew a sketch on a piece of paper. Pantalone, my character, almost always has thick eyebrows and a falic-like nose. I know his animal is a chicken, so it should have a lot of wrinkles in his face. Here is a picture of the sketch I did before starting the making of the mask:

First, we molded the mask with clay. We used a very hard, yet very mold-able, kind of clay. We had to use a lot of clay to make the details since Steve told us to "not be gentle" with characteristics. Therefore, we had to use a lot of clay to make the nose and the eyebrows. We used a cutter to leave space for the eyes. We had to put the clay in our faces to see if the size of the mask was adequate and keep on asking our peers how could we improve the mask according to our face. After we were done doing the mold, we took it outside to the roof to put it somewhere were the mold could receive sunlight and dry. We left it there for a whole day for it to dry

After we had the mold, we used cotton and polyester cloth to make the mask. To paste the cloth to the mask we used a mixture of water and glue. To make sure the mask will end hard enough, put three layers of cloth on top. Cutting the cloth and pasting it was a thorough activity. We had to make sure that the cloth was in the edges of each characteristic in the mask, so there would be no problems when the cloth hardens. After finishing putting the three layers of cloth, we let the masks dry for another day.

After letting them dry, we used paintbrushes to paint the masks. Pantalone usually uses a dark color so I decided to paint the mask in a dark gray paint and use light gray paint to emphasize the characteristics like eyebrows and lips.

The final result was very different from the sketch. Using light gray in the mask really helped emphasizing the characteristics but the mask was too long; it's difficult to use the clay mold to shape it to the size of your head.

Reflection: Next time, in order to make a clay mold that would more accurately fit my face, I could make a paper shape that shapes my face to put the clay on it. The nose could have been bigger to exaggerate the characteristics in commedia. Also, the nose ended positioned over my mouth, which obstructs my voice when I am speaking. Bigger wholes for the eyes would have been better also to have a better view through the mask.

Conclusion: Making a commedia del arte mask can be lengthy process. There is different characteristics in different commedia del arte characters that must be emphasized in masks. Now that we have made the first mask, if we have to do a second mask we can use difference things to enhance it like draw a shape of our face before in paper so we can put it on top of the clay.