Make a Mask of Yourself brief - Final Outcome

The final image! I decided to photograph my mask in the bin area in my accommodation at night, as that is an environment in which you might find foxes. I asked my photographer flat mate to take the photo, and he offered to edit it as well - just adjusting the saturation and brightness.

I tried to do a 'shy' pose, as that was one of the other things that came up when I asked people their first impressions of me, and it befits a fox encountering humans too.

I felt a bit awkward crouching behind the bins with a paper bag over my head, as quite a lot of people were sitting outside in the courtyard and could see into the bin area! But you gotta face your fears and do what you gotta do to be an artist.

Make a Mask of Yourself brief - Testing and Development

To be honest, I didn't really do much testing during the making process. Once I get an idea in my head I usually like to just get it down straight away, and unless there are problems with my original idea that I hadn't forseen, I don't develop it much.

I decided during my initial ideas that I wanted to draw a fox face on a paper bag, as I had already made the connection that foxes dig through rubbish, so I thought it would suit the concept.

From looking at pictures of foxes, I decided it might be a good idea to have the fox have something in its mouth from the bag/bins, as that's obviously why they scavenge. I then thought it could be my favourite food, to relate a bit more about myself through the mask, but my favourite food is chicken Katsu curry, which I thought might be quite hard to draw in a fox's mouth. So in the end I settled on a chicken drumstick to represent it.

I drew the face on the bag with pencil, painted it with acrylics and outlined it in pen. Voila.

Make a Mask of Yourself brief - Initial Ideas

My initial ideas for this project were based on my feelings in that moment - I was actually quite tired and hungover. I am quite often tired as I have trouble going to bed at a suitable time and problems getting off to sleep. Since this is a regular occurrence, I thought it might be quite a good idea to create a mask representative of this part of my personality.

However, this seemed like a fairly weak idea, and was only a starting point, so then I thought about meeting loads of new people this week and how I presented myself to them, so I then asked some people around me what their first impressions of me were. A common response was 'shy', which I expected, but I got a few interesting ones! My favourites being 'top notch colour scheme' (due to my lilac hair) and that I look like a fox. The latter particularly intrigued me as I like foxes, I'm ginger naturally and they're a shy, nocturnal animal, and with my sleeping habits, I'm practically nocturnal too!

Anyway, I decided to start expanding on the fox idea, initially thinking ambitiously about creating a paper maché mask after Matt showed us an artist's (I can't remember the name) paper maché animal masks. However, Matt also had some leftover brown paper bags, which I thought also linked to the fox idea, as they do scavenge through bins and bags.