Hello all,

    Reading up on African tribal masks, it was said that people, animals and spiritual beings were represented in the masks used in ceremonies. Also, it was said it could represent a person in death in another form rather than their human body. I recently had my grandfather pass away and I thought it would be a cool way to connect with him through the use of a spiritual mask. My favorite animal is a tiger and his is a wolf. I thought it would be cool to try and fuse the two together using content and color. That is why I chose a few tiger masks and one wolf mask to see what styles differentiate them.

   Just looking at this piece, it is an obvious potrayal of a wolf head in the form of a mask. There is a symbolic moon depicted in this mask and the base color of blue is depicted. The artist used depicted a moon on this mask with the combination of the color blue in oder to create a sense of night, which in this case can be associated to the wolf, as it is often seen as a creature of the night howling at the moon in the distance. Also, the artist used a combination of symmetry and color in order to create the eyes of the wolf the focal point of the piece. Overall I believe this artisd was successful in conveying a creature of the night, but also introduced a sense of tranquility within the wolf, because of the soft strokes on the mask almost creating a false texture.

   This is more of an abstract representation of a tiger head. It is elongated, has short strokes to represent stripes, and has a very rough texture. There is still symmetry in this mask, but it is not proportioned. There are only two teeth, but they are represented much larger than they would be in reality, along with the animals tongue. I believe the artist was trying to create a fierce and aggressive nature to this mask, which in my opinion was partially successful. Everything in this piece if fierce, except for the tongue; which reminds me of a dog. I feel that lost its aggression and mane the mask a little less intimidating.

   This piece is a realistic representation of a tiger in the form of a mask. It meets all of the basic qualities that a tiger does. The artist used basic color and symmetry, which was intended to maintain the idea of reality. Also, there is a clear texture in this mask, which I am not quite sure what it represents. Overall the artist made a basic piece and was simply successful in clearly depicting a tiger, but in my opinion, not much else.

 

Here are my sketches:

 

 

And here is my final mask:

 

    Okay, so as I stated before in my inspiration description, this mask is meant to be a mixture between a tiger and wolf in order to pay tribute to my grandfather who recently passed. I started with a basic tiger stripe design, I represented the tiger through the color orange and had gray lines to represent stripes on the tiger. The stripes however were gray to build into the transition of a wolf. I then added the yellow markings. The large circle on the forehead is supposed to represent the moon and the little dots on the side of the head are the stars. There are lines on the nose that are supposed to be representational of whiskers. I then added the blue/green color to the mask in various places to represent the night sky.  Finally the stripe on the chin to represent goatee, in order to relate to my grandfather while giving it a human touch. I wanted to keep the mask realistic, so I created balance by utilizing symmetry on this mask.

 

   Overall, making this mask surprised me. I put a lot more thought into it than I thought I would. I made a deep emotional connection within this mask and it only makes me wonder how other people feel about the masks they make. Every marking on my mask has a symbol and there is a reason why it was included. I used to think the masks just consist of random markings and just were accepted to give the tribal feel. I also lived in the moment whilst creating this mask. My sketches all looked similar, but it is funny how different my final mask was. I highly enjoyed this experience and would definitely do it again!

 

Thank you,

 

---Mike Ushman