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Drawing
a Chinese Opera Mask
The beautifully
drawn masks that you see on the faces of Chinese Opera performers
are the result of tedious efforts. Every line is drawn and
every colour is filled in with paint brushes. This task of
drawing and painting is done by a make-up artist or the performers
themselves.
You can
practise drawing a face mask too! First, you need to study
the actor's face as the designs will depend on the shape of
his face. Then, you must decide on the role that the actor
will play as the mask designs and colours should bring out
the personality and the roles of the actors and actresses.
Now, let us show you the step by step method of face painting.
Have fun trying!
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| Clean
the face and put on base powder. Then, knead the
whole face completely to make it easy for drawing
the outline of the sketch. |
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Decide
and draw the eyes, and sides of the nose. Dip
fine blue color by hand and apply to the forehead
column and cheek contours.
Next,
dip fine black paint and fix the position of the
eyes, nose sides. Put aside the white eyeballs
position inside the eyeholes.
Do
you notice that the above two steps are completed
only by using fingers? Thus, this process of face
painting is called "Knead by fingers."
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Fill
in with white powder base after drawing the outline
with a pen brush.
Then,
draw the courage shape Yin Tang lines, eyebrows,
white lines between the two eyebrows, white lines
under eye socket, colored nose sides base and
two white falling lines near side of the nose.
Finally,
draw the white eyeballs in the black eyeholes
and draw the chin white.
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Using
Chinese line ink, outline the black eyeholes again
with pen brush. Fill in the small mouth corner
black.
Next,
draw a smaller line between each eyebrow and near
the eyeholes.
Finally,
draw two lines that hook sharply in the white
chin.
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Use
red color to draw the red courage lines in the
Yin Tang center lines. Then, fill in the nose
area at the side so that it looks turned over.
Next,
fill in the red eyebrow ends and red lip carefully.
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Complete
the look by drawing in the blue lines and yellow
eyebrow ends and fill in the blue brow and cheek.
Now,
the mask is complete. Can you guess the character
traits of this mask?
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Pictures courtesy of: www.paulnoll.com
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