How not to make a mask

When I wrote about how to make my face, I had completely forgotten about a crazy event from the late 1980s, a time when I got Paul's help in making a plaster-of-paris casting of my face, a time involving peanut butter, blood, eyelashes, a bathroom floor, and a laptop.

My brother David was given an assignment in art school in the late 1970s to create a mask. He created a mold of his face and then used that to form a flexible latex rubber mask that fit his face. He then added hair and paint to that to come up I heard a crunch inside my head. with this great Hollywood-like mask.

That inspired me to make a mold of my face, but my goal was far simpler. I would (1) make a plaster mold of my face and (2) make a latex rubber mask from that mold and be done with it. I would then have a mask of myself that I could wear to a Halloween party. Sounded straightforward enough.

Way back then, I asked Paul if he would help me make the mask. I wanted him to apply the plaster to my face while I lay on ground.

I explained to him that I would insert some straws in my nose for breathing, Dramatic recreation mix up some plaster of paris, and lay on the ground; he would then spread the plaster on my face and I'd lay there until it set.

I wanted to be able to communicate while he was applying the plaster but didn't want to move my facial muscles, so I planned on typing on a laptop on my tummy for him to look at and respond to.

I had a mustache and didn't want it to get stuck in the plaster, but I couldn't find Vaseline. Hmm...what else was available that was greasy or oily that could fill in the gaps in my mustache and prevent hairs from getting stuck? I thought of peanut butter. Soon, I had worked peanut butter into my mustache.

Next were the straws. Here comes the blood part. As I stood at the bathroom sink, I cut some short lengths of plastic straw and inserted one on one nostril. I cut the next one and was reaching up. My hand caught the edge of the first straw. I heard a crunch inside my head. Oh MAN that hurt. Soon, blood was dripping out the end of the straw. This was a great opportunity to make Paul laugh, so I maintained my composure and calmly said to him, "Hey Paul. Check this out." Yep, he burst out laughing. (And that was the memory he brought up the other night, when I showed him the paper mask.) Not wanting to experience that again, I cancelled the straw idea. Paul would just leave my nostril area open and I'd figure out how to close that part off after the mold had solidified and I'd removed it from my face.

Okay, down to the bathroom floor, laptop at the ready. Paul spread on the goo. It was rather warm. Plaster of Paris heats up when mixed with water; there's a chemical reaction. He applied it over my eyes at some point.

The goo was soft enough that some seeped into my eyes. It's gritty. So now I had grit in my eyes and it was uncomfortable and all I could do was let my eyes water and yell via laptop. I typed a lot. I told him what I was feeling, what I was guessing, how I didn't know what I was going to do, but to keep going. We'd gotten this far.

I think I lay there for at least 15 minutes with the grit in my eyes, all the while wondering aloud via laptop whether the material was stiff enough for me to remove. I had had Paul apply a first layer of goo, then apply strips of gauze and then apply more glue, with the idea that the gauze would hold pieces together in case cracks developed.

Eventually, I decided it was time to lift off the mask. As I lay there, I lifted lightly on the edges of the mask near my jaw. I felt the mask tugging on not only my mustache but also my eyelashes and eyebrows. Now able to speak, I described this new predicament to Paul.

I got onto my knees with face toward floor so that gravity might assist as I tried to figure out how the mask would come off. Earlier, my eyes ached from the grit, and I found minor relief from not moving my eyes. Now, my tear ducts kicked into action again as my eyelashes were being pulled, mustache was being pulled, eyebrows were being pulled.

I paused. "What am I going to do?" I felt a bit more panic. I've got this big chunk of stone for a face, anchored by many hairs.

I tried tugging again. Perhaps, I thought, each peanut-butter greased hair would eventually slide free from the mold if I kept up consistent tension, like pulling corks out of wine bottles.

After a few minutes of not getting far, I considered how women tweeze their eyebrows. Geez. They pulled hairs out of the follicles. I was willing to pull harder, even pull out hairs. But I had no interest in yanking, though. I wanted to give the mask a chance to let go of its ends of the hairs. So, that's what I did. I started pulling on the mask. My eyelids, eyebrows and upper lip stretched.

For the most part, the mask won the tug of war. I was missing about a third of my eyelashes, a third of my mustache and a third of my Many of the dark spots are hair follicles, rich with DNA eyebrows. It wasn't evenly distributed thinning, either. There were places with no hair, no eyelashes.

My first action after getting the mask off was to put my face over the sink and splash my eyes with water, attempting to bring relief from the grit. Soon after, I had slight swelling in my eyelids from eyelashes being yanked.

The white plaster mask had its own hair! It had eyebrows, eyelashes and mustache! We laughed. I got some tweezers and began pulling the hairs out of the mask. Wished they were still on my face.

Eventually, I did clean up the inside of the plaster mask, painted uncured latex rubber on it and baked that. And then I had the rubber mask I could put on over my face.

The plaster mask, by the way, easily illustrates the effect I was trying to create with that paper mask I Click for enlargement made in the make my face post. You know how it is with some photos of craters: your brain makes you think they are sticking up instead of going down? That is true of this image: the nose is NOT sticking out towards you. Look at this image upside down. The plaster mask is leaning against the lamp on my desk.