Wooden Majora’s Mask

In this project I show you step by step how I build my Majoa's Mask from scrap.

Material Mask:

• 10 pieces 4cm x 10cm x 35cm wood board (I used birch because I had it laying around and it is good to work with, but I think other soft woods should work as well) for the main body
• 10 pieces 3cm x 3cm x 10cm wood blocks for the horn
• 10 screws to fix the horn onto the mask (I used 3,5mm ones)
• wood glue

Rough work:

• band saw (or other tool to cut out the outer shape)
• angle grinder
• rough flap disc (I used 60 or 80 grid)

Detail work:

• sharp gouges in various sizes
• rotary tool (I used a cheap one which was on sale in my local super market)
• carving bits (the ones I used were cheap ones from china; they worked, but the did not work very good)

Painting:

• acrylic paint (you should at least have the basic colors, the rest you can mix yourself)
• brushes (especially for small details you should have a good brush with no outstanding hairs)
• board for mixing the paint
• containers to store the colors you mixed (I used some bootle caps, which I sealed with wrapping foil)
• many reference pictures of the mask, so you can check they colors or you color the mask to your liking

1. You take the wood boards and glue them together to one big solid block (40cm x 35cm x 10cm)
2. Search for a picture of the mask and print it the size you want the mask to be. Tan glue the paper onto the wood block (on the 40cm x 35cm surface). I recomment to print it twice so you have a reference for the futher steps.
3. Cut out the outline of the mask with a band saw or an other tool you have
4. Now you can define the rough shape with a flap disc and an angle grinder.
5. When you are happy with the rought shape you can move on to the next step

1. After the grinding with the flap disc most of your glued on template will have vanished, so you take the secound print as a reference to draw on the most importent lines on the mask. I can recomment that you draw the middle axis, which you take for reference to get the details symetrical.
2. For must of the details I used the rotary tool, because with the gouge it is much harder to get into some tight corners. The gouges is perfect for bigger shapes like the eyes or the outer form like you can see in the pictures. Most of the back side is taken out with a gouge. Do not dig to deep in with the gouge, so the mask does not split (it happend to me two times, but you can carfully glue the pieces back together)

3. Once the back and the dip at the sides for the horns is added, you can bore the holes for the mounting screws for the horn In this step you can also make the horn. I bored from the outside, so that I have the middle point on the outside. Now you can transfer the hole on the horn blank and bore a hole smaller than the screw, so that the wood does not split. I recommend you to number the horn and the holes in the mask, so you can assemble the horns at the right place at the end. Now I have went a step back to rough grinding the horn with the angle grinder. You screw in a screw, which you can use as a axis as you grind it round (Sorry, I forget to take pictures of this step, but you can see pictures of the horns on screws at the step "Painting Horns")

4. After the details are made you have to sand the mask (I used 80 and 120 grid sandpaper)
5. OPTIONAL: If the want to give the mask an old look, you can use the smallest gouge you have to make small grooves in the mask to simulate cracks because of aging. (If you do not know what I mean compare the last picture in "Painting the Mask" and the picture in "Make it look older"). In these scratches will later sit the black paint to make it look older and in my opinion better.
6. After sanding and befor painting you have to clean the mask from the dust. The best way is to use compressed air.

Most likely you have to mix many colors yourself. Especially for the the colors which cover a large area of the mask (blue, red, green) I would mix a large batch, because it is extremly difficult to mix exactly the same color twice. So I recomment you to mix lager batches and store the in an container if you are done painting, so you have some spare one (if you have for example an error and painted something wrong you can correct it with the spare paint).

1. Paint the whole mask in white. If everything is white, it is easier to paint the other colors because you can better see which surface needs to be painted
2. Then you paint the mask step by step. I startet with the black details, because some of them were hard to paint and if I make an error I could correct it with the next colors which should be in this place.
3. Next you can paint the big areas and at last but not least the smaller deatils.
4. At last I painted the eyes. Therefor I started at the bottom with red an then faided on to yellow. Therefor I did not let the paint dry and painted into the wet paint. I recomment to try this transient first on a scrap piece of wood.

1. Like the main body of the mask I painted the horn white at first and let it dry.
2. I wanted the horn not to be one monotonous colors, so I gave them a bright green ground color and then tryed to make a color fade of the main color from the tip to the bottom

If you want to skip the next step, you can now attach the horn to the mask and also a chain with screws to hang it up and you are finished.

If you want to make this last step, the mask has to be completly dry. You have to mix black paint with water till it is very runny. Than you apply this mixture to an aria, let it sit for a few seconds and than dab it careful with a paper towl.The paint should than sit in the groves and look like cracks that formed over time or aging stains. Now you repeat this process till you are happy with the result.

I hope you enjoyed this instruction and that I could help you if you want to make one yourself. If you think this is much to difficult, don't be discouraged. I thought the same at the beginning, because it was my first carving project. But the longer you work on it the better you get and most of the errors are correctable and you learn from them.

P.S. I hope that there are not to many spelling mistakes, because like you maybe gussed I am no native speaker and they did not bother you.