Commedia dell'arte based off may stock characters that are using recognized by the mask that they are wearing. For this project I decided to create a mask for the stock character Capitano which was one of the very first stock characters. This character is a strong character that is all talk and no show he has a large presence on stage and everyone notices him. Most of the time he is depicted as very brave in words but runs away when it comes to a physical confrontation.Props for this character are very simple he usually has a long sword which he never actually uses during a fight.The mask for the Capitano is usually show with a long nose that is the main feature. Where as most masks from commadia were very colorful the mask of Capitano was usually flesh color or close there to.To create this mask was a bit of a challenge due to the fact that we have different materials we can use today to create a mask. When I started my mask I was trying to stay as true to the character as possible so I chose to make a mold with baking clay. This was simple due to the fact I have already taken my advanced stage makeup class and still have my face mold.The first thing I did was mold a mask on to my face and get it as close to the characteristics of the capitano as possible. In doing this I gave him a long pointy nose and angry looking eye brows to show that he likes to fight even though he does not like physical confrontation. Once I had the basic out line of the mask I baked it in order to make it very hard and rigged. this did not work out as planed it was still very brittle and broke very easily. so I had to find a way to reinforce the mask that would allow me to keep the shape and detail I had already put into the mask.When I ran into this problem I decided to go back to paper mache. So instead of doing a normal paper mache where you would remove the mold that you used to get your shape I left the baking clay in the mache. This gave me the detail that I had from the beginning and made it much harder so that I could create a mask.Once I had my mask in order to get to the color I had to paint it in a way that gave it the looks of leather which is the closest they would have been able to get to a normal skin color but during the time of commadia. So I used three different colors to blend together so to give the effect of skin or in most cases leather. Giving the mask a colorful and texture that makes it look closer to authentic commadia masks.In my opinion my mask is very close to an authentic commadia mask except for the construction of the mask itself.
