One of the projects i'm doing this summer is creating a set of Commedia dell'Arte masks. I've done a bunch of research and have planned the production calendar, spec'ed out the materials cost and labor estimate, and have verbal agreements with a couple of assistants for the matrix sculpting and actual production work. What's left to be done before we start is to settle on the designs for the masks themselves.
I was really inspired by the mask designs of WT Benda (whose work was exhibited at USITT this year) and have always admired the work of Alyssa Ravenwood in this area. So it was with those two artists' masks in mind that i began these ultra-preliminary sketches.
This sketch is the very first two hints of breaths of ideas, absolutely not to be considered the final designs at all. I wanted to try drawing two front-view mask concepts, an angry character and a worried/sad character, using some of the conventions of Commedia mask design--deep lines of hyperbolic expression, planar/bulbous feature exaggeration, and monochrome colorization.
I am undecided about whether i think it's helpful or distracting to draw a human lower jaw into these designs, as that's not part of the mask itself. I'll do that for the next set and see how i feel, but i'd love input as well. If you were sculpting half-masks from a design rendering, do you want to see the face of the wearer under there in the design, or just a couple of style marks like a chinline and lipline?
For an actual rendering (further down the road) i'd use this long sketchpad to create a single mask design, front view on the left and profile on the right, since i'll have two other sculptors on this project in addition to myself, and want to make sure we're all working on the same metaphorical page, so to speak.
Pretty excited about this project!
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