Venetian Mask

So I went to Venice in the summer. And loved it. Which is unsurprising as I have wanted to go since I was 12 years old and first read City of Masks. Which is still an amazing book.

Anyways. I decided while I was there that I would try and learn how to make pretty masks in the same style as the ones i saw when I was there. And that is what I have done. I bought a basic mask with no prettiness to it and made it pretty. One day I might learn how to make the basic mask too. But I suspect the only way to do that at an affordable cost it so make several million of them at once in a factory. So for now... not gonna happen!

I have two versions and I would like people to tell me which they prefer

The one with silver/pearl is the original, then I painted gold over the detailing for a more traditional colour pairing. I think I prefer the original though

In the future I intend to be a bit more adventurous and stick interesting things onto it in true Venetian style. But for now just painted prettily. I have a plan for a Harlequin inspired one that i'll be working on once I have all the paints I need. This was mostly a test run to make sure my techniques worked how I thought they would

I really like curlicues, and practise drawing them a lot which turned out to work well because it means I now have a very steady hand for them, which was important here. The design was come up with as it went along so the side shown above is a bit less neat than the side below, because after one half I had gotten enough practise to do it better

Really I was very impressed by how pretty this came out looking. Though there is stuff I could have done better, of course.

I used gold acrylic paint over the detailing and while I think it works alright, the pearly colour did work better I think. Serves me right for trusting tradition over my own unerring grasp of colour matching I guess!

In Summary

These are quick and fun to make, if you ignore the several days worth of drying time.

They also come out looking very pretty indeed.

This week I will get the paint for the harlequin mask and see if that works just as well.

I still dislike gold as a colour. Not sure if that will ever stop being true...

Please, let me know which mask you prefer - is it just me not liking gold or does the pearl actually work better?