Pavi Largo’s Greatest Face
Dear boyfriend will be dressing as Pavi Largo at this Friday’s midnight showing of Repo! The Genetic Opera, which presented a really interesting crafty challenge for me. Pavi’s distinguishing characteristic is his obsession with women, and more specifically, stealing their faces and wearing them. I’ve wanted to try my hand at mask making and prosthetics for a while now, and I thought it would be fun to make a mask of my face for him to wear.
A lot of research went into figuring out the best process. I also wanted to keep this within a certain budget so I opted to do this with whatever materials I could find locally (though honestly, I may have gotten a better product for the same budget if I’d ordered specific mask making supplies online… you know… if I’d planned ahead and all). The initial plan was to do an alginate mold of my face, apply plaster bandages to support the alginate, do a plaster positive from that, and finally a negative mold (also in plaster) to pour the latex into. This plan failed, badly, because we couldn’t seem to mix the alginate correctly and it set up too quickly. Eventually we abandoned the alginate plan and went the simpler route of doing a plaster bandage mold of my face.
I applied generous amounts of Vaseline to my hairline, eyebrows and eyelashes, but it just wasn’t enough. I can’t stress enough how important it is to use lots of Vaseline. Cover every bit of hair. Then add more for good measure. Some of my books suggest using a bald cap when doing face casts and that’s actually a very intelligent idea – I know I’ll be doing that in the future…
This is the inside of the plaster bandage mold of my face (complete with my pour eyelashes). Its freaky looking – it looks like you’re looking at a positive, not a negative which is what it actually is. You can see one of the eyes didn’t cast right but that doesn’t matter since I will cut eye holes into the mask. I mixed up some plaster and, with a small paintbrush, I filled in any cracks or spaces left by bubbles so that there would be a smoother surface for the latex. I also touched up anywhere the bandage gauze showed through with a light coat of plaster. I used a little bit of Sculpey to plug up the nostrils, and was ready to pour.
I set up a little stand to hold the mold level, then filled it full with liquid latex and let it sit for about 20min. During this time, a skin forms where the latex is in contact with the plaster mold. After the time was up, I poured the latex back into its container, which left behind a skin a little less than 1/8″ thick. Using a pin, I popped any visible bubbles in the latex, then let it set for a few hours before peeling it out of the mold (in this photo, the latex mask is sitting on top of the plaster mold, so its a bit distorted). Trimming the mold was probably the biggest pain in the whole process. I tried xacto knives without success (the material was too springy), and finally did it with scissors, though its a bit rough.
Here is the stage the mask is at now. Its naked latex – I don’t have any paints or inks specifically formulated for use on latex rubber, so I’m going to apply the mask to his face with spirit gum on the day of the event, and then apply real makeup to it. I’ve tested it on a piece trimmed from the mask and it seems to work very well, and will probably make it look even more like a stolen face than if I’d painted it. I used more liquid latex to permanently adhere some false lashes to the mask. I’m dying to stick it on him… it is a little small, but I think that’s sort of the point. Once I’ve got it stretched on and well stuck down with spirit gum, I’ll use liquid latex on the border of his real face and make it up to look like burnt/scarred flesh. I’m also going to cut little clips out of metal and then use liquid latex to attach them to his face once the mask is in place.
Project status: so far, so good! ^_^
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