Craftsmanship of shadow making?

The production of shadow puppets is extremely complicated, from the selection of skins to the shaping of shadow puppets for the theater, there are many craft skills. The traditional production process can be divided into eight basic steps: selecting the skin, making the skin, drawing the draft, passing the draft, carving, applying color, sweating and ironing, and decorating and combining.

Selection of leather

An Xi'an shadow puppets are made of top-grade "Qinchuan cowhide" as the raw material for carving, because the cowhide is tough and translucent, and it is generally best to use the cowhide of a female between four and six years old. If the choice of black cowhide, regardless of bull or cow can be.

Skin

There are two methods of preparation of cowhide: one is the "net skin", the other is "gray skin". Net skin production process is selected in the cowhide, placed in clean cool water soaked for two or three days (according to the temperature, the cowhide and the water to grasp the specific situation), take out with a knife scraping. The first process first scrape off the cow hair, the second time and then scrape off the skin of the meat residue, the third time is gradually scraping thin, scraping off the skin. Every scrape with water soak once, until the fourth exquisite fine work, the skin scrape thin soak bright until. Scraping must pay attention to make the skin uniform thickness, hand strength to be light and steady, so as not to damage the skin. Scrape good support on a wooden frame, drying that is.

Another kind of gray skin called "soft scrape", soak the skin with calcium oxide (quicklime), sodium sulfide (smelly soda ash), sulfuric acid, ammonium sulfate and other pharmaceutical formulas, submerged into the water, and repeatedly immersed in scraping made. This method of scraping out of the skin, close to glass, more suitable for carving.

Drawings

The drawings used in the production of shadow puppets are called "sample sheets", which are the designs passed down from generation to generation. Since paper sample sheets are less likely to be preserved than those made of cowhide, few sample sheets of the Ming and Qing dynasties have been handed down to the present day.

Passing the draft

Carving artists will scrape the cowhide into pieces, with a damp cloth damp soft, and then with a special push plate, a little bit of oil juice one by one to push and grind, so that the cowhide is more smooth and smooth, and can lift the contraction of the cortex, and then only to depict the drawing of the pattern. The rational use of finished leather before drawing is also a delicate work. Thin and translucent finished skin, to be used for the head, chest, abdomen, these important parts; thicker and darker finished skin, can be used for legs and other general props. This not only saves raw materials, but also improves the quality of the shadow, but also makes the shadow figure form the upper light and lower heavy, in the picking sign performance and static leaning station when the stability, hand. Tracing the pattern is to use a pen with a steel needle to copy the outline of each part and the design pattern, depicted on the surface of the skin, which is called the "draft", and then put the skin on the jujube wood or pear wood board for carving.

Skulling

Carving knife artists are very careful, generally have 11 or 12, more than 30. The knife has a different width of the beveled knife, flat knife, round knife, triangular knife, flower mouth knife, etc., the division of labor is very delicate, requires proficiency in a variety of different ways to use the knife. According to traditional experience, a flat knife should be used to tie up a line pattern; a flat knife should be used to push a straight line pattern; a chisel knife should be used to chisel a round pattern on the edge of the sleeve head of a traditional dress; and a sharp knife (i.e., a beveled knife) should be used to carve some twisted and varied patterns. The artist's motto for carving is as follows: Cherry blossom flat knife, Wanji flat knife push, sleeve head jacket edge chiseling knife on, flower pointed knife carving.

Carving line has a distinction between real and imaginary, as well as dark lines, painted lines. Dummy line for the negative carving, that is, hollowing out the shape of the line and become, shadow more for this line method. Solid line to retain the shape of the contour digging out the rest, for the Yang carving, mostly used for raw Dan, beard ugly white face, where the white objects are carved with Yang method. Solid line along the sides of the outline of the intermittent hollow line, mostly used in the scene of the building of the carving. The dark line is scratched with a knife without penetrating the skin, mostly in the active joints. Drawing lines are replaced by a pen to show detailed objects.

Carving of the knife blade landing point is called the mouth of the knife, the mouth of the knife has a broken mouth, pointed, flush mouth, round mouth points. Flush mouth is mostly used for square and standardized objects, such as table boxes, cabinets, buildings, etc.; pointed mouth is mostly used for cooking smoke, streaming clouds, water waves, wind bands, etc.; round mouth is mostly used for flower patterns; broken mouth is used to cut off the overly long positive engraved lines to make the connection more and strengthen the service life of the shadow man.

Coloring

After the shadow is carved, the coloring begins. Older artists with color is very careful, most of the copper, silver Zhu, Pu Lan, Li Zi and other minerals and plants concocted big red, green, apricot yellow and other colors coloring. Concocting method first to make a good pure color into a slightly larger wine cup, put into a few pieces of transparent leather glue boiled with fine leather, and then put the cup on a special lamp holder, the lower side of the alcohol lamp fire, so that the glue color dissolved together into a porridge-like, while hot on the shadow of the person. Although there are not many kinds of colors, but the old craftsmen are good at color matching, coupled with the changes in the intensity of the dyeing and dyeing, so that the color effect is exceptionally brilliant.

Sweating and ironing

After applying the color, the shadow should be dehydrated and sweated, which is a key process. Its purpose is to make the color after the appropriate high temperature to eat into the cowhide, and make the water retained in the skin to evaporate. Dehydration sweating method is many, some with a thin wooden board clamped shadow parts, pressed under the mat of the hot kang; there are also flat cloth wrapped shadow parts, with a soldering iron or iron hot; another very old way is to use adobe or brick built into a zigzag shape, the following straw heat, flatten the shadow so that dehydration sweating.

The success or failure of dehydration sweating key to mastering the temperature fire, the required temperature is generally in the upper and lower 70 degrees Celsius. The temperature is appropriate, the skin dehydration sweating smoothly, the skin moisture can be evaporated, the color can be eaten inside the skin, so that the color of the shadow of the beautiful, and long time does not fade, and the gelatin can be dissolved to close the pores of the skin, the shadow of the permanently not warped and deformed. If the temperature is too high, it will make the skin shrink a group, the process all scrapped; temperature is not enough, the gum color can not be dissolved to eat into the skin, the skin of the water is difficult to exhaust, resulting in the color of the shadow figure is not bright, long time will still be deformed.

The above methods have advantages and disadvantages. Although it is convenient to use soldering iron and electric iron to dehydrate and sweat, the effect is poor; the method of sweating under the hot kangshi mat is mainly used for large sets of shadow, which can also be used for shadow figures; the effect of dewatering and sweating with adobe and bricks is very good, which is because after adobe is baked and heated, the temperature is flat and the water-absorbing force is strong, but the effect of this method is very slow.

Adorned with a combination of

Shadow figure is the main body of the shadow, its structure is quite ingenious. In order to move flexible and unhindered, a complete shadow figure form, from head to toe usually have a skull, chest, abdomen, legs, arms, elbows, hands, *** count eleven parts.

Head: the head includes the face, hat, beard and neck, the lower end of the wedge, when the performance is inserted into the upper part of the chest within the bayonet, when not in use, it is unloaded for safekeeping.

Chest: the upper part of the device bayonet, in order to insert the shadow head with. There are two arms, each divided into two sections of the lower arm, and the lower arm is connected with the hand.

Abdomen: Abdomen is connected to the chest, abdomen is connected to the legs, legs and feet as a whole, including boots and shoes.

Shadow figures should be carved out of the joints of each part of the roulette wheel-type pivot, called "flower wheel" or "empty flower", the old craftsmen are called "bone seam", in order to avoid excessive overlap of limbs at the superimposed place The old masters called them "bone joints" to avoid too much overlapping of the limbs. The point where the bone joints are connected is called the "bone eye". Selection of the bone eye is related to the beauty of the modeling of the shadow, the right choice will have a spirited look, and vice versa, it will look hunched over and dying, depressed. After selecting the bone eye, the pivot nail engraved with cowhide or fine cowhide rubbed into the line embellishments combined into eleven major components are thus fitted into a complete shadow man.

In order to perform the needs of the device, but also three bamboo sticks as a joystick, that is, the sign. Wenchang characters in the chest of the upper front device a sign, wire connection, so that the shadow people can reverse activities, and then to the hands of each device a sign, easy to dance hands; and martial arts characters chest sign device position in the upper back of the chest (i.e., the upper back shoulder), in order to facilitate martial arts, so that the shadow people can make a running, standing, sitting, lying, lying down, rolling, crawling, fighting and other postures.