Old chimpanzee mask

Reuben Diamond

Hey everyone, my name’s Reuben, I’m 14 and I’ve been making masks and doing makeup for the past few years. I’m gonna post progress pics of this ape mask I’m making here, so hopefully you like it!

Heres the first pass of detail on the sculpt:

Kai Rottmann

Welcome Reuben :-)

Thats looking great *thumbup*
Cant wait to see the next steps :-)

Greets

Reuben Diamond

Thanks Kai!

Once I was happy with the forms of the sculpt I separated the ears for moulding seperately. Then I started adding finer texture and wrinkles and just refining the detail.

Chris Ellerby

Looking good Ruben!

/Chris

Reuben Diamond

Thanks Chris!

Reuben Diamond

I detailed the ears to make them accurate to a real chimp ear 
because the ears are so smooth, and they’re going to be mostly covered in hair, I didn’t bother moulding. Instead I just stippled latex over the sculpts. I used 15 layers, with the latex pigmented with acrylic paint. I used three colours, a light pink, a dark maroon,and a yellow brown. I stippled layers of these different colours to intrinsically pigment the ears.
When they were dry I peeled them off to get some nice latex ears, that give me a nice base colour to paint on

Reuben Diamond

Finished off the sculpt today
then made a really quick and dirty stone mould

I was really in rush to get this mould done in 15 minutes so I couldn’t take the time to make it look pretty, but hopefully it’ll work fine.

Soaking the mould as it goes through its heat cycle results in a much harder stone

The plasteline came out really easily, so I should be able to get a casting out pretty soon 

Kai Rottmann

Looks very good Reuben ;-)

Reuben Diamond

I didn’t have quite enough latex to dwell the mould so I brushed in around 10 layers of latex to build up a fairly stiff skin. The casting came out great, with almost no visible bubbles
then I got ready to paint!

Reuben Diamond

I started the paint with a pale flesh tone 
then with some reddish brown washes
i then stippled on another, more pinkish fleshtone to tie it together. I then went on with an opaque grey-brown-black, with some mottling and missing out areas to achieve the discolouration that chimpanzees get with age. One more yellowish wash tied all the other layers together, followed by a sealer coat of pros-aide.
Here’s some photos of the final paint job. I was really pleased with this, so hopefully you all like it!

Chris Ellerby

Paint job is looking great!

/Chris

Reuben Diamond

Thanks!

Reuben Diamond

To finish it off I just added some gloss in specific areas to stop it looking dry and lifeless

Reuben Diamond

I glued the ears on with pros aide and stippled some black acrylic over them
For the eyes I sculpted some eyelids over a resin eyeball core and then walled them up and made a quick stone mould
then dwelled latex in it

I cast another eye and tested them in the mask
hoping to paint these pretty soon!

Reuben Diamond

Hey all, I haven’t posted anything here for a while but I’ve been fiddling with the eyes for long enough, so here goes:



I painted them with acrylics and finished them with castor oil sealer. I know I got a lot of paint on the eyelids, but I’ll just cover it up when I paint them
I ended up making one eye milky and blind, because I wasn’t so happy with the iris, but overall I like the look of them.

Reuben Diamond

Just painted the eyelids

Kai Rottmann

That looks very good ;-)

Greets

Reuben Diamond

Thanks!