Tiki African Mask

Starting Materials= paper, ruler, eraser, pencil(s) and floral foam block.

Rule off your page. Floral foam blocks in this project were 9 inches x 4 inches x 2.5 inches. You will need a front view and a side view (profile).

Draw your face in half of the first square (half is 2 inches). Place a dotted line so you know where to fold.

Fold at the dotted line.

Trace the drawing on the back of the page to transfer it to the other half of the 4 inch wide rectangle.

This is what it looks like when transfer is complete. Notice its very lite.

Go over the lite lines and make them match the other side. You should now have a symmetrical image.

Use a ruler to put guidelines onto the profile side of the sketch. Guidelines at the tops and bottoms of important lines will help you draw the profile.

Fully guidelined page. Add as many guidelines as you think you need.

Draw the profile of your figure. Beware this can be very challenging to do. Watch your guidelines carefully.

Flip the paper over and use pastels, chalk or charcoal to cover the back. Since the foam is green I used a light yellow.

Pastel covered back of the paper.

Place your drawing over the floral foam and line it up so that its perfectly on top of the block.

Trace your linework with a pencil. Be careful you will likely punch through the paper in this process.

This is what it looks like after transfer.

Here is what my project looks like after carving the main lines. I will still need to remove a lot to get the nose to stand out (3D). But this will give me guidance in my carving.

Here is my day 2 sculpture, starting to get more three demensional. I think that its best to carve really deep lines on day one so that you can take a level off of areas and create a feeling of depth.

Here is Day 3 and we now have a lot of depth. Notice that the foam is very rough looking. All you need to do to fix that is smooth it with your fingers.