5 T H S H O O T - E N V Y

10th April
My Envy shoot is one that I have been the most excited about! My model Elise is a good friend of mine and is also my housemate, she has modelled for me before and for this look I thought her face would be perfect for it. For the beauty look I created quite a strong eye design in contrast to natural skin to make the eyes and the green stand out more. Elise has stunning long hair, so when we started shooting I think the best images were when her hair was pulled over to one side to show bare shoulder which made the image seem a lot more elegant.

For the hair this was the hardest transition from beauty to avant garde for me as this one of the most intricate hair designs and it was all my models hair as opposed to using props or hair sheets. I had practised this design before and I made a note on how long it took me so I was on quite a tight time schedule, as I had to complete the make-up and shoot within an hour and a half. To start off I had to section Elise’s hair and even this proved to be challenge as her hair is so long and so thick, so this took longer than I thought and then I had to crimp the hair. I background each section and then crimped the hair and sprayed with hair spray as when brushed out, this gives the hair more volume and easier to create structure. When the hair was fully crimped and prepared it was quite quick to shape the hair, after endless amounts of clips and hairspray, and then all that was left was to run the straighteners along the edges to create a sharp, crisp line. Once the hair was finished, I noticed Elise had quite a lot of baby hairs along her hair line and as the hair designs had a lot of curves on in it, I thought a good thing to do would be to run gel through the baby hairs and curl them onto her skin. I am so happy I did this as it really helped the overall look and it gave it something different than what the other looks had, that extra polish.

4 T H S H O O T - L U S T

9th March

4^th shoot and so far everything’s going to plan! I am about half way through my shooting and week and so far everything has going smoothly, good communication with my models to arranging meetings and with my photographer also.  Today I am shooting my Lust beauty and avant garde and the main colour involved today is pink. For the beauty look I wanted to keep it quite simple, very similar to my Wrath look, whereas the main focus of the look was a vibrant lip. My model Rosie has incredible skin so this gave the final look a good finish as her skin took well to the makeup. The transition from one look to the other was more of a challenge for this look as there was quite a bit of work to be done. For the hair for the second look, I used 2 of the hair sheets I made a few days earlier instead of one large one, and folded them to create an interesting wave effect and pulled out the edges to make sure there wasn’t a distinctive PVA glue line, to ensure the hair seemed natural. As the edges of the hair are quite fly away I feel that this makeup look compliments the hair due to the harsh edge cheekbones. As Rosie had quite dark roots in comparison to her blonde hair, I felt that the pink on the face didn’t look right as there was a cut off line along her hair line so by blending the pink through her hair, this brought the two together I feel.

Once I had attached the hair in place and finished the makeup look, there was something that didn’t look right and I struggled to put my finger on it. I had a play about with the hair and changing the style of it, but whilst attaching the hair I cut away small sections to achieve the right shape and with one of the pieces I cut off, I placed this over Rosie’s roots – which worked wonders! By doing this, this brought the whole look together and erased any distance between the hair and make-up. I feel that this is one of my strongest avant garde looks and I am so pleased with the outcome, even my photographer said that this was his favourite look so far which was good to hear.

C R E A T I N G H A I R S H E E T S . . .

9th April

From my previous research into different hair designs and techniques used, I tried to think outside the box on how to create vibrant hair designs that haven’t been done before. As I had already experimented with creating sheets of hair by layering crepe hair onto tracing paper and ironing, I wanted to create something that had more strength and didn’t make the hair as flimsy. While I studied art foundation at college, for one of my projects I made sheets of coloured tissue paper and thread and to do this I layered them in-between PVA glue and cellophane, so to create more structured sheets of hair I thought id try this process and I am so happy I did!

To create the hair sheets and to make sure the hair looked real-like at the end I straightened the crepe hair and continuously brushed through with a thin-toothed comb to make sure the hair became really fine. Once the hair was fine enough, I spread it into a thin layer across rolled out cellophane and then covered the hair with pva glue, by keeping the top of it free to the air this helped it try quicker. The end result was exactly what I wanted, although one side was shiny due to glue, the opposite side looked and felt like feel hair so this was perfect for creating shapes and layering for when it came down to my final shoots – a fun but tedious process!

3 R D S H O O T - N A I L P R E P E R A T I O N . . .

8th April

From when I had previously spoken to Emma, she mentioned that I should do close ups of the nails, lips and eyes for each sin to show the progression from beauty to avant garde instead of each page in my book being a headshot image as I wanted to show diversity within my book. For some of my shoots where I will be focusing on nails I have experimented with colour and texture to see how what I cant create and what would look good with different looks. By using a combination of acrylic tip nails and square acrylics, I practised by layering different colour and using the end of a bobby pin to create a swirl design for my Sloth avant garde shoot. Such a simple technique and yet I absolutely love the results, on camera the nails stood out so much and could really see the mixture of colours used.

As I previously mentioned in my post earlier about the wig preparation for my Sloth shoot, this is the first time I shall be using a black mode, a challenge I am excited about. I met Wura at a fashion show I worked on a few weeks ago and I am so glad that I have this contact, as she is a stunning model. When I started preparing the skin for the beauty, it came to my attention that she unfortunately had quite bad skin, not only her face but her chest. With make-up I did the best I could to cover it but I know when I start editing the image it will be a challenge for me. I used Illamasqua Rich Liquid foundation in 420, as it was the darkest shade I had and this combined with a dark face powder I feel I did quite well with the skin match. For the eyes the shade of blue I originally planned on using, the colour wasn’t standing out as much as I wanted it to but after layering on different shades, I am pleased with the result as the contrast of the blue to her skin stood out well which is what I wanted. As she had quite a bit of modelling experience as soon as we started shooting she got into the swing of it and the final images came out brilliantly!