The Art of Weevil
Broad-nosed weevil mask
By Jennifer Girón
Every year when Halloween decorations start to appear in houses I'm reminded that I should make myself a weevil mask. I have thought of this for years but never made the time for it. Recently, the Museum of Texas Tech, where I work, has been more emphatic on their mission of outreach and engagement. For Halloween the Museum gets invited to make presence at the Trick or Treat event at Safety City, a park where kids go to learn about basic civics on the streets. Last year we went to hand out candy and tell people about our existence and a bit about the work we do. We took some specimens and quick speeches about them to share with kids and parents alike. We were invited again this year, so I knew this would be my excuse to actually make time to make the mask that was in my head for so long. I never made anything like that so here is how I went about it.
I worked on this in the evenings or weekends, by bits of time and lots of patience to let things dry.
First, as people do nowadays when they need to learn something and do not know who to ask, I went to YouTube and searched for tutorials to make a mask. I went for masks with a beak, just to see how those could be constructed. The winner for me was a video of making a plague doctor mask. I tried using the pattern that the author of the video provides, but it is very bird-like, which might work for other weevils, but certainly not for a broad-nosed one!
The face mold reinforced with paper strips worked great to have a separate unit where to fit the beak. I created my own pattern by drawing the outline of the lateral view of a typical broad-nosed weevil. It took several attempts to make the back of the beak fit my nose and eyes, but eventually worked. I glued everything in place, and applied some more paper strips for the whole mask to hold its shape before attempting to apply papier-mâché.
Again, I turned to YouTube to find out how to make papier-mâché. For some reason, the most useful videos were in Spanish, using materials that we had at home. The recommended process uses home-made glue, essentially a mixture of water and wheat flour cooked over low heat. The video below, on the left compares the processes of paper trips with papier-mâché by going though each, step by step. the video on the right shows how to make home-made glue. Trust the process!
I soaked small pieces of paper over night before blending them. After blending and filtering the paper pulp, I decided to use food coloring that I had leftover to "prime" the pulp and potentially saving (drying time) on coats of paint. I mixed the home-made glue with the pulp and followed the process from the plague doctor video to cover the mask with a fairly thin and uniform layer of papier-mâché.
At this point I still needed to figure out how to go about making protruding eyes, so I used a round mold to shape the layer of papier-mâché. This was another bit that required patience, since I only had one mold available and waiting for one to dry to make the other was not in my patience quota for the day.
Since it felt quite boxy and flat, I made ridges and the elevated nasal plate, as well as mandibles with scars and scrobes to give some texture and realism. I also remembered to make holes to be able to place the antennae, which was another bit to figure out later.
For the antennae I used wire, a straw, and paper formers for the clubs as the "skeleton". Additional papier-mâché was needed. I rolled out balls, shaped them into pyramids, sort of calculating that they filled the length of the wire. For the tip of the wire to go in the club, I made sure to bend the tip so that it would hold and not just slip away.
Here, patience again with shaping, putting the wire through the pyramids and re-shaping them to close any gaps. the club was the bit that took most fiddling and adjusting.
Then, to let all dry. It took a while.
