Projects: Maquettes

[labricoleuse]

Today my maskmaking class completed their first project, which was to make polymer clay maquettes.

A maquette is a small clay model created as a guide for a larger sculpture. Since costume craft artisans interpret mask designs which are rendered in 2D by a costume designer, sketching out your ideas in clay by making maquettes can be an invaluable step in the design and construction process of mask creation. In this way, you can have a conversational exchange with the designer about size and scale of the mask in 3D and make changes on a small scale rather than a large one. You can repaint the maquette a number of different ways, too.

I had my class make small maquettes from polymer clay as their first project, to get a feel for sculpting before moving to a larger scale, and to compare how it goes sculpting a "sketch" vs the larger full-size masks they will make next. We used polymer clay because it stays malleable until you fire it, and then it's hard and paintable. (Some brand names are Sculpey and Fimo.)






Maquettes by (clockwise from top left)
Emily Mason, Randy Handley, Amanda Phillips,
Rachel E. Pollock, Amy Page, B. Daniel Weger,
and Jacki Blakeney Armit.

These maquettes are all between 2-4" tall, and were sealed with a glaze before painting. They were painted with acrylic paint and then a second glaze coat put on most of them. The blue face by Randy Handley has foil applied to its eyes.

Here's another example of maquettes, from the world premiere of the stage adaptation of the film Donnie Darko (adapted by Marcus Stern for the ART/IATT production in Cambridge, MA), for which i designed the costumes:


Two different paint effects on a maquette for Donnie Darko's "Frank"




These maquettes were about the size of an apple. (A horned apple, apparently.) I can't remember if i sculpted them or if they were sculpted by mask artisan LaRisa Allen, depicted above in the press photo, or if i did one and she did one or what. She definitely made the full-scale mask working from the final approved maquette. The maquettes had ragged bits of pigsuede applied to them, in the same fashion as wound up on the final mask:

Comments

[baronessv.livejournal.com]

I can't remember exactly, but I think I did both of them. I have pre-paint pics of both maquettes floating around somewhere.

Here's some clearer pics of the finished Frank mask:

Front (http://www.flickr.com/photos/baital/1279338004/)
Right (http://www.flickr.com/photos/baital/1279337020/) (You can see the narsty "weeping eye" effect pretty good in this one.)
Left (http://www.flickr.com/photos/baital/1279336044/)

[baronessv.livejournal.com]

Correction: I think I sculpted both of them, but I seem to remember you doing at least the final paint on the "weird eye".

[museumfreak.livejournal.com]

if you want to email me some contact information at museumfreak at livejournal dot com, Sandra, who is one of the folks i'm responsible for as a regional rep, from Gateway Performance Productions would be pleased to send you a publicity kit and talk further with you about their work!