Creating A Chinese Opera Mask Birdhouse.

Traditional Chinese Opera Mask

As a crafter I am always looking for new subject matter, new ideas if you will. After finishing my last birdhouse with a mola inspired design my partner suggested I try a Chinese Opera mask on a gourd. I was struck by the idea and said to myself "why not?"

Raw gourd birdhouse

For those who have never seen Chinese Opera, the artistry is quite stunning. and very similar to Japanese Kabuki. It is an ancient Traditional, highly stylized performing art that combines music, vocal acting, mime, dance and acrobatics. The Peking Opera, with over 100 regional branches, is the prominent "national theatre," featuring elaborate, symbolic makeup and costumes to portray historical, romantic, and supernatural tales. Disney's MULAN would be a Chinese Opera tale. The masks can be used in acting or mimic actual painted faces of actors. As in Shakespeare's day, all roles, male or female, were acted by men.

Google's search engine gave me a trove of options

Because I already had gourds that were scraped clean with bird holes and hanging cords the challenge was finding the right "mask" to paint.

After a Google search for Chinese Opera masks I soon had quite a collection to choose from. Because I wanted a black background I thought a mostly white face would "pop" from the background.

Then after I had my gourd ready for the image I wanted to use, I froze for several weeks. It seemed an impossible task that I wouldn't be able to do. It became worse after I tried to sketch the face on the gourd. It seemed like it might work but looking at my sketch and the beautiful masks hanging on the wall in front of me, I set it aside. What followed were days  of struggling how to actually paint it.

Finally one night when I couldn't sleep I realized that I should paint around where the the white face would be then paint the face covering any mistakes I made. The next day the housekeeper came and I hide in my studio, my very messy second bedroom, and got to work.

Amazingly it went quite fast. I could stick a finger in the opening and paint the black outlining all around where the face should be.

Once I had the face defined I painted it white around the black background and black parts of the mask. I had to be careful but acrylic paints dry quickly though for  large areas I hung the gourd to dry and washed my brushes so the black wouldn't remain in the bristles.

Once dry, I added vermillion to the lips that now surrounded the opening for birds (hoping, of course, the face wouldn't scare them). The face is taking shape but oddly a 2D photo doesn't capture the 3D gourd. Now to add nose, ears and eyes.

The good thing for me was the minimal use of colors: black, white, a Chinese vermillion for the lips and simple decoration, brown for the eyes and of course a rubbing of white for the lips and eyes that make the mask look almost real. 

The real surprise was that once started, even allowing for drying periods, was that it only took about four hours to create. 

However, the top neck and back looked rather bare so I decided to add Chinese styled clouds to the top of the front and larger stylized clouds to the empty back in white. That was all it really needed. 

I had done my panicked delay for no reason. Friends who have seen it either in person or photos have been supportive and now that I have completed it realize the steps I should follow for the next, more ambitious birdhouse. A lot of future projects depend on the shape of gourds. For a wide selection of natural gourds in all shapes and sizes I use Welburn Gourd Farm products. Visit their web site, welburngourdfarm.com for a wide variety of ready to paint or sculpt birdhouses available in a variety of shapes and sizes!  Take a peek.

I always let everything dry thoroughly a few days which happens here (quickly in Palm Springs if left in the sun a few hours) before varnishing with an outdoor acrylic varnish. I usually apply several coats a day apart. Oil based varnishes are better but since cleanup is messy I don't use as much, throwing the brush away after. In fact I save several projects so I can do them together. So brushes don't dry up I place them in an air tight baggies and the bristles usually are still flexible for a day or two.        

This latest project shows there is no limit to what you can try!      

Thank you for reading my blog! Please be sure to visit on a regular basis or contact me at KrugsStudio@gmail.com. New blogs are added all the time. In conjunction  with my store I feel that “design” is an important part of our lives. Everything we use or live by was designed by someone. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates design about my blog.

Please be sure to visit my store, KrugsStudio.etsy.com on a regular basis. New birdhouses, craft items, photography and canvas paintings are added all the time. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates local handcrafted items about my store.

OWN or GIFT an original work of art this year!

                                                                                                                                    

Living The Life In Palm Springs: GOD'S WAITING ROOM

I moved to Palm Springs in January 2016 during a divorce at the age of 70. It wasn't my first time here and once here I thought of the number of times I had been here starting with my first visit in July of 1959.

New friends I met here gladly gave me advice on how to deal with the summer heat. You get thermal curtains, keep them closed all summer, strip naked, crank up the A/C and catch up on all the shows you missed all winter. Because a Chicago winter is keeping you in, is a Palm Springs summer is also keeping you in. You don't hang out much in our summer either unless you have a pool. Because of the visible age disparity here I was also told, wink wink, this was God's waiting room!

My mother's brother and his wife lived in Highland Park so in 1959 we used that as our base to visit all the tourist attractions of SoCal. My sister had turned 5 and that was considered old enough to go to POP (Pacific Ocean Park in Long Beach), Marineland, Knott's Berry Farm and, of course, Disneyland.

But my dad got tired of all that and despite my uncle's warning, wanted to visit Palm Springs! Yes, it had a kind of mystical appeal even back then.  So we drove out in mid-July in our 1951 Nash Ambassador (an upside down bathtub with fins), no A/C, to weather that was about about 115º. We gasped in the heat, every window open because it was NEVER that hot in Portland, OR. Driving into Palm Springs on Palm Canyon the first thing I noticed was there weren't any cars, anywhere. Nor any people either. Stores had signs "closed for the season" and finally I asked, "Is this a ghost town?" Eating at about the only restaurant in town that was open, the waitress told us few stay here in the summer. No kidding.

Over the years I visited friends, came to weddings and in the winter had get away weekends before and after kids. There was a great water park near where I now live.

After I moved here I was amazed at the amount of activities that go on from late September to about Memorial Day. The streets were full of snowbirds and there were times I thought I was in Canada there were so many Canadian license plates on the roads.

250,000 fans see Rock 'N Roll
over two weekends

January has the Film Festival where I binge on movies from around the world, Desert Open Studio Tour where artists open their studios throughout the entire Coachella Valley for three days over two weekends. Modernism Week celebrates Mid-Century architecture and living in what is the capital of Mid-Century ethos. Visitors came from around the world in an 11 day trip to the past. The irony is $5-10,000 cabins for winter living are now $1-3,000,000 homes that have mostly been rebuilt to stand the desert heat!

The BNP Paribus Tennis Tournament brings tens of thousands as the greatest names in tennis compete in Indian Wells. Then there's two 3-day weekends of Coachella with 125,000 rock fans flooding every available room and camping site. Next come Stage Coach with 100,000 western fans. The list goes on and on. Many themed LGBTQ+ events occur throughout the year as well.

The one big thing since I moved here though has been the amount of building. Disney is building a huge resort that includes over 2,000 homes starting at $1,000,000. In fact I bought my condo for $140,000. It is now valued around $300,000. My mortgage is cheaper than what I would pay for rent in the same space by more than half. The median home price today in Palm Springs is $1,000,000.

The dirty little secret in this valley is the lack of ''enough" medical facilities. Just to get an appointment can be a weeks long if not a months long process. You learn to NEVER refuse a doctors appointment and automatically asked to be moved up if there's cancellation. Example: after going through 11 catheter changes in two months and refusing to see my urologist, my appointment made in November is this March. Another referral had me go to the University of California at San Diego in what was a nine-hour road trip. I was glad I went but I'm 80. Luckily a friend came with me as I petered out coming home. Fortunately both Desert Oasis Health Care and Eisenhower have Immediate Care clinics (my home away from home). But does that make up for actually seeing your PCP, Cardiologist, Urologist, etc.? Not to me. 

The massive Disney Cotino Bay is in,
I might add,  the desert!

Another unexpected cost is car insurance. Friends from San Francisco tell me our rates are higher than there. No doubt. The average age is equaled by only some parts of Florida. Some of the driving I've seen is unbelievable. I have a glowing red Mazda CX-5 in Soul Red. Seriously it shimmers in the sun. I can't begin to tell you how many near misses I've had from people pulling out in front of me. They never looked! Seriously, you CAN'T see a RED car?

Because of unusually high street speeds we have more accidents that I ever saw in the San Gabriel Valley. In the past week two major accidents on Ramon Road (more speedway) not more than a block or two from home had the street completely closed.

Cities here are all hot to build build build not considering the strain that puts on infrastructure. More doctors, nurses and technicians are desperately needed for an ever expanding, aging population. That, not building, needs to be a priority of every city in the Coachella Valley. The average age in Palm Springs is well over 60 and heavily Gay. I imagine wealthier cities average that age average and more. Medical care is not all that suffers. Fire, police, social services.

 Lest we forget this valley has gone through many a boom and bust. I once had a boss who owned a condo that he sold a decade after purchase in the 1990's for the same price he bought it for. That is actually a net loss. Should health care reach a critical mass people will look elsewhere to retire just as Canadian property owners have sold their homes after Trump became president. 

I love it here but I certainly didn't expect investing 25% of my time chasing doctor's appointments and driving to get there.

Thank you for reading my blog! Please be sure to visit on a regular basis or contact me at KrugsStudio@gmail.com. New blogs are added all the time. In conjunction  with my store I feel that “design” is an important part of our lives. Everything we use or live by was designed by someone. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates design about my blog.

Please be sure to visit my store, KrugsStudio.etsy.com on a regular basis. New birdhouses, craft items, photography and canvas paintings are added all the time. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates local handcrafted items about my store.

OWN or GIFT an original work of art this year!