Another contribution I’ve done to our project was designing and making the masks that are displayed on the pillars. I used the mask research conducted by Roza to both design and start making the masks. Me and Roza ended up splitting the job – I designed and sculpted the bases and Roza decorated them.
I had a bit of a disaster when making the first mask. I thought it would’ve been faster and better if I made a sort of paste that I could just place down on the mask and shape it to fit my idea of what the mask should look like. Unfortunately, I ended up adding too much water and it ended up ruining the mask that we used as a base for it. Because of that, one of the masks ended up having to be made using a different base mask.
After I realized that it would not work, I ended up tossing it all into the bin. I thought about what I could do instead and it dawned upon me that for whatever reason we had an excessive amount of tinfoil in the house. I ended up using the technique of sculpting the base using foil and covering it with paper mache until it was the shape that I desired.
I started with a general base and then built upon it layer by layer, until I had what it was that I had been hoping for. Its blocky, rough and natural shapes are exactly what I needed for these designs to be. I wanted it to look handmade, slightly exaggerated and stylized so that it would resemble traditional Lithuanian Pagan masks. After a couple of days of sculpting I ended up with this set of masks:
After these had been done, it was time to paint them. We split the painting 2/3, Roza painting 3 and me painting 2, but because I had done quite a bad job with Nem’s mask, I asked Roza to try and repaint it in hopes of salvaging it. In the end, I only painted my own mask – the bear, while Roza painted everyone else’s. After they had been done, I felt as though something was missing, the masks looked a little bit too “skinny” for my tastes, they did not look finished and thus – the idea of adding an extra layer of fluff in certain areas of each mask came to mind! To test it out, I tried it on my mask, but as it was a success, we decided that it would be good to cover every other mask with some fluff too. I ended up applying fluff to mine, Lue’s and Roza’s masks and the other 2 were done by Roza.
If I were to change anything about them, I would’ve gone for more muted colours, ones to match more with the colours that I extracted from the painting before, perhaps reworked the stylization of them, and, of course, reversed the mistake of ruining one of the base masks that ended up having to be replaced with a different kind of a mask. Apart from that, I am satisfied with how they look.
Robertas Tijusas 
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