Testing and Development

Although I felt I could have pushed the ideas further- I felt like I wanted to begin to develop my ideas further by making mock ups- initially I worked from an interpretation of a drawing (mentioned in the previous post) I decided I wanted a slightly layered- and separated effect- so I thought I would cut out different sections to put together in a layered way later. 

At first I worked with the top part- as shown in the first photo.

 After cutting out the top part I realised that it would not be effective to have a squared off or blocky bottom to the mask. 

 After looking back at my ideas and thinking about the differences between the drawings I decided to have a more flowing lower half of the mask. 

 On the full-scale version of the mask I noticed that cardboard had different effects on both sides- both of which I liked, therefore I decided to use both the white and brown sides- which I feel amplifies the difference in styles of the two sections.

Once I was happy with the shape of the mask- I began to think it looked pretty blank- and needed some decoration. I thought about using colour but after some tests I realised it didn't really work- so I decided to keep to black and white- thinking of both the ink and brush drawings at the ideas stage and the simplicity I was trying to get across. My first additions were eyes and a nostril- in relief on cardboard. I still thought it looked blank so I started adding abstract shapes in black paint- only on the top part. It worked well so I kept going. I considered adding colour to the bottom plain cardboard but after mocking it up with coloured paper I decided to keep it as it was.