Animal Head Masks-African Beauty

      We are working on a project where we had to make a tape head and a human mask and animal mask to convey something. First we got a Styrofoam head and wrapped it in saran wrap and then wrapped it in tape to make a shell of the head. Then we took the tape off the head and we had to come up with something to fill our tape-heads with. I chose colorful tissue paper and this tanish long papery thing that looks like the grass in Africa. The animal I chose was a Zebra because when I think of Africa, I think of zebras. I used the clay to form a zebra nose, then I painted it a base color of white and then painted on the stripes with black. For my face mask I painted it zebra stripes to go with my whole theme. In the end I put gloss on the mask to make it shine and then I put the zebra nose on the mask by gluing it onto it. This part was really frustrating because the clay nose wouldn't stay on the head and the mask makes my head heavy, so everything was not stabilized and the tape head's neck is very weak. In order to fix it, Lisa helped me stabilize it a little by putting this foam that hardens into the head so that it could stay in one place and could be stable. So the title of my project is 'African Beauty' because I wanted to convey how beautiful Africa truly is and for me, I think that zebras are a good way of showing the beauty of Africa but also the wild heart that Africa has too. Even though this project had its ups and downs (mostly downs :p) I still learned  how to make a clay animal mask and have a concept and theme that all goes together. I enjoyed this project and I think it made me a better artist in a way, by making me think hard about how to fix problems or come up with creative ideas, but I'm glad that this project is FINALLY over. (: