The Steam Man's Face

I've spent this past week making a mask out of scratch. As you can probably tell, I am very interested in Steampunk, and I'm sure you can see that theme in the mask. "The Steam Man's Face" is a mask made of bandages, old and stained from the years of abuse. Steam and grime has tarnished the copper, and dirt stains the cloth bandages. Here's how I made the mask.

I started off by creating a simple mask shape with some cardboard and gaffer's tape. The Gaffer's tape is expensive, but it holds up well to paper maché.

 Eye and nose holes were then cut out, and the mask shape was trimmed.

 Additional layers of cardboard were added to the mask to give it a raised surface. A triangular piece of cardboard was placed over the nose hole to prevent the nose from being seen. Notice the cardboard jaw. This was later replaced with a copper jaw.

A layer of paper maché was placed over the cardboard to give it a better shape. A layer of plaster gauze was placed over the paper maché to harden the mask even more, and to give it a fabric texture.

 These parts were cut from a sheet of copper and shaped to fit the mask. The eye piece is a bit of tubing I found.

Using liver of sulfur, I aged the copper to give it a worn and old feel.

Here you can see a bit of the texture of the mask. This is the first layer of paint.

 Using epoxy, the copper pieces were glued on. The back of the copper pieces were sanded down to allow the epoxy to grip the metal.

The final mask. A thin woman's belt from H&M keeps the mask on the wearer's head.