I got the mask making bug when I made my Glenn Strange chicken-mache Frankenstein mask last year, and jumped right into another, with just days before Halloween. It's taken me almost a year to complete the Wolfman mask to buddy up with the Frankie, but now it's finished, too! Here's the story.
I've wanted to do a rendition of Lon Chaney Jr.'s original Wolf Man for some time, and the success of the Frankenstein Monster mask pushed me to take that approach.
Like the last mask, I'll be drawing from the original character and the intense textures of the Don Post mask.
I started by doing a quick sculpture over my lifecast in a soft, easy to shape, oil clay. I know that the imprecision of the process means I'll never hit the likeness spot on, so it's just a matter of checking in at each stage to make sure it still feels right.
A few layers of the ol' chicken mache (how to here) for structure and detail.
And then I popped it off the sculpture once dried, and gave it some paint. Pictured below are temporary teeth. The final teeth were done in sculpey.
I wanted to use the old style of cheap brown fur fabric to keep with the raw, constructed look. There's a hood to cover the back of the head, but the hair on the face is snipped off of the fabric backing and glued down to the mask to allow it to lay flatter.
But what really matters is how well we can pull off the iconic Don Post Calendar shot.
Jasper as always so amazing!
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