Tag Archives: Japanese

Traditional Facepainting – World Masks Workshop

by Christopher Agostino

This week brings an opportunity for teaching a group of High School students how to paint faces. In conjunction with a performance of Before Cave Walls…The Transformation Lecture, I will be doing a hands-on workshop with a group of art students who will then have the pleasure of painting several classes of elementary aged students. We present these programs in schools within a cultural context, and so the face patterns I will be bringing into these workshops are traditional designs from world cultures.

Click on this link for the pdf guide sheet for this World Mask Workshop WorldMasks_facepainting_agostinoarts

From the magazine article that first fired my imagination about painting faces based in cultural traditions

Choosing which cultural examples to present students is always a conundrum. There is an infinite wealth of source materials, and I recognize that the limited selections I present may seem to represent a much larger world than they can. The examples I present in a workshop setting are different than those I might demonstrate in a lecture performance, as I want to give them designs that a novice facepainter can emulate. (For example, in presenting this program to experienced makeup artists I will include the classic female role face from the Chinese Opera which requires a facility with blending colors that is difficult for beginners.) I also use examples with minimal pictorial imagery because I want the students to work free from the idea of trying to create a realistic portrait of an animal or such. The less complicated the design examples, the more they can focus on what it feels like to transform a human face. And that is the primary goal of this workshop, to give these students the experience of being the mask maker.

Here are the 6 faces I am using as the key cultural examples.

Amazon: A Mayoruna matriarch wearing markings and whiskers signifying a powerful cat like a jaguar

Africa: Surma people, from the Omo River area of Ethiopia.

Papua New Guinea: Example of traditional face art from a highlands culture, painted for a festival

Native American: Portrait of “Fast Dancer” of the Iowa culture, by George Catlin, with the hand symbol signifying he is a warrior

Africa: An example of the asymmetrical bodyart of the Southeast Nuba, Sudan.

Japan: The “suji-kuma” pattern to portray a samurai

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See a video and images from the workshop:  World Masks – Facepainting Workshop