Overall review of Hair and Make up Design, Sept - now

I have thoroughly enjoyed the course so far, and I definitley feel ike I have learnt alot! Not going to lie it has been hard work at times and very stressful for some units wih the workload and the stress of practical assessments, but definitley worth it. I am 100% sure I made the right choice in coming to University to do this course. Not only for the skills and knowledge I am learning/going to learn but for the experience. I have found Group 1 (the group I am in for lessons) to be lovely people and I think as a group we are very supportive of each other. There has been a great deal of different techniques to learn in our practical sessions in both subjects and although I have been taking notes I think I need to adapt my style of writting and improve my organization, for example using a different notepad for each practical session, to avoid confusion and be able to record information in a more structured manor, simply to make life easier for myself when writting up tech files. Something that has suprised me is how much I have enjoyed our theory lessons, I have found the historical element extremely interesting not only this but the theory lessons have sparked an interest in writting which I did not predict on starting the course, when I thought the practical lessons would be my favourite.
Some of the practical skills I have found the hardest to grasp have included contouring and shading. I greatly underestimated the skill it takes to be able to contour correctly in order to give the appearance of either changing the shape of certain features or drawing attention to certain features and creating shadow. Although I have improved somewhat since september (where my shading looked patchy or like nasty bruises) I still think this is something I need to practice a lot util I can say I am good at it.
Digital imaging production has ben intersting, however the I feel the workload has been very heavy connsidering it contributes a smaller percentage to our grading. This being said there have been parts of the subject I have enjoyed. Photography was very interesting to learn and I feel I have learnt quite alot regarding fashion styling for example the difference subtle things like, colour, props, poses and facial expressions can make in the eyes of someone viewing an image which I didnt really think about before.
I feel the timed assessments went quite well although I have identified areas in both subjects where there is room for improvement. I think Anna and I made a good team as we were both very focused and willing to practice. I also felt we communicated well with each other.
Overall I feel the first semester has been a success (well... I hope so when I find out my grades!) and I am very much looking forwad to comng back after Christmas.

More pics of Annas and My assessents

 

Heres are some more Pictures of My design by Anna

 

 

More pictures of Annas design by me

Annas assessment of my design on me

I was really pleased with the outcome of Annas practical assessment on me. I think she worked realy hard to get the design as accurate as possible and I think the end result was good. Ana completed the design on time and the lines were very neat. Although the face appears to be all white in the picture above the base was infact skin coloured tand the white around the eyes blended in very well to give a misty cloudy effect which I wanted. Anna did have a littletrouble hiding my eyebrows but the fact that she was runing low on supra colour in white did not help other than that I think Anna did an excellent job and I was very pleased.

Feedback for blog

Ive fainally been able to log into my university email without any problems so can now reflect on my work so far and the fedback I was given regarding my blog. As Sharon said at the time I did need to make more references to Elizabethan style/make-up/fashion. I agree I did need o do this and added a post after this feedback about the Elizabethan fashion styling in the Film Elizabeth the golden age and how the outfits and colours they were wearing would have had  meaning in Elizabethan times do to the cost of dyes and the associations of wearing particular colours.
Sharon also mentioned that she would like to see me draw more so befre altering my face chart for my final design I sketched and coloured some pictures of what my design would look like from a side view on a little cartoon like pesron rather than just drawing another face chart.
I have tried to refence my last few blogs as I had previously not been doing it correctly using the Harvard method. Sharon said to me not to wory about going back and rferencing the whole blog as I did list websites I had taken information from, but to Harvard reference any of my future work. I have attempted this with the last couple of posts that required referencing and I found this VERY confusing so is something I definitley need to work on in future. I was rather pleased with my overall feedback as I wasnt sure If I had just been writting a load of rubbish for the past weeks so definitley cheered me up :)

Pictures for tech file

For some reason I can't access my university email and my regular email doesn't seem to be working so instead of emailing my pictures to myself I've had to upload them to my blog and save to my laptop in order to print them for my technical file. They should probably be on my blog anyways so here they are, Also one thing I have noticed since uploading them is that there has definitely been an improvement, especially in the case of face charts! But also in the application of make up on live models. However I still think I have a long way to go so will be taking every opportunity I get to practice the skills I have been learning since September.

 

This is one of my first face charts, at the time I thought it was a good attempt however on reflection now I can see how awful my shading was, or lack there of, especially around the nose and under the chek bones. Therefor the result was a very 2 dimentional image.

 

This is my first attmp at an Elizabethan look, and again not much shading..

Aslight improvement in this monochrme look, this is where I began to actually practice shading in order to make the picture look as realistic as possible instead of just focusing on what colour products I would be using and where I'd put them on the face.

Hereis another practice face chart purely coloured to practice shading. the make up on this face is a natural look and I copied the techniques from a video on youtube.

 



Another Elizabethan design, in this one you can clearly see shading taking place and the face starting to form a face-ish shape thanks to this. I did not choose this design as my final design as I thought it was a bit boring and there wasnt much to show from the contemporary image I had chosen to sample at the time apart from the heart shaped lips.

This face chart is th begining of my final desgn, in that I mean that this at one time was my final design until I realised I could not find the contemporary Image that inspired this look to note on my blog. However since this design still had a a strong link to the Elizabethan image I was using I was able to choose another contemporary look and use that to ammend this design to encorporate those modern elements instead of starting again from scratch.

 

This is my FINAL final design, contains a mixture of the original Elizabethan portrait and shapes and colours inspired by the Alex box image shown on one of my previous but fairly recent posts.

 

This is my first attempt at blocking out eyebrows usin prit stick. the right eyebrow has dried and been covered in white supra colour whist the left one is still drying.

for some reason I have uploaded these in the wrong order. these picture are from a few weeks prior to learning how to block out the brows and are of concealing and contouring, using our Kryolan products.

 



 

This image shows a monochrome make up style using the colour green as you can see I clearly needed  A LOT of practice contouring! As you can clearly see straight lines which have not been blended well and also dark colours applied in the wrong areas to achieve the look I was aiming for.

 

 

This lesson was all about applying eye make up for the right shape of the eyes and applying lip colours to compliment the shape of the lips. I was fairly pleased wth the result of this application minus the shading to the eyebrows wehere I got a bit over enthuiastic with the dark powder.

 

 

 

This image is from Halloween week where we practiced Halloween looks. The lesson I learnt on this day was to stop talking and pay attention as I only completed this much of the look within the lesson. To add to this there is no symetry between the two sides of the face and I think the application could have been neater. To create this look I used Kryolan Supra colour.

 

Another ttempt at blocking out eyebrows and applying an Elizabethan style look. This time I feel the eybrow blocking went much better probably due to the fcat that I waited for the glue to dry completely and added more layers. I was quitw pleased with the overall look although I think the blusher could have been applied with more care.

 

My first practice a Annas design, at this point I was panicking about finishing the design within the allowed time but I wasnt too dissapointed with the look. One cheek though which for some reason I do not have an image of, was very dark and I found it hard to blend the purple contouring without leaving a blotchy looking cheek.

 

Finally My timed practical assessment images! I was fairly pleased with the end result and the fcat that I managed to complete the look within the given timescale however the pictures I have taken here using my phone are very blurry. I shall upload some of my Final pictures taken using the actual camera at a later date.

Timed Practical Assessment

Yesterday was my timed practical assessment where I had to produce Annas make up design using her as the model. I felt that the assessent went better than expected, as in all practices of the look I ran over time with the application, however on the day I finished with about 10 minutes to spare. I was pleased with the overall look of the design, however not being under the pressure of being timed I think I could have improved in certain areas such as blocking out the brows, one brow apeared to be much better than the other, I think this is due to me not applying enough layers of gle as I was in a hurry to finish on time and spend longer on the applicatio of the make up. Also the blending of the contoured areas and blending the gold and purplish redish colour on the lines which ran either side of the nose. Also in the photos taken, you could see that the line needed to be a little more even as one ran at a slightly different angle across the top of the  brow. Here are somee picture of the end result.

A post I forgot!! Da Vinci Sketches/shading

I just found a "to do list" post it note with some homework scribbled on it from a while ago in Kats lesson where we were asked to look at the works of Da Vinci in regards to sketching and how to shade to help us with shading/contouring faces and with shading face charts. So I have done a little research into Da Vinci himself and that of his work so here goes...
Da Vici was a famous Italian, not only artist, but wait for it.. Scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, architect, botanist, musician and writer! born on April 15th 1452 and dying on May 2nd 1519 (Angela Ottino della Chiesa in Leonardo da Vinci, p. 83) Da Vinci is considered to this day to be one of the most intelligent and talented men in recorded history. His most famous works of Art include the Mona Lisa, and The Last Supper. (http://www.leonardoda-vinci.org/biography.html)

Davici demonstrate kowledge that was hundreds of years ahead of his time these sketches not only exhibit his skills as an artist with beautiful shading and perfect detail but they clearly highlight just how much knowledge he had of anatomy which most people did not even begin to understand until centuries later. (Susan Hills, 2 August, 2013)

 

 

Leonardo Da Vinci was left handed and used a method of sketching short paralell lines to begin his drawings, this method is called "hatching" The fact that he was indeed left handed and his hatching lines start from the upper left of the page and end at the lower right compared with a right handed artist who would sketch from the upper right to to lower left, helps authenticate the works as genuine Da Vinci pieces. Da Vinci was also tought to be the peson who founded the idea of curved hatching in order to create a 3D  effect in his pictures. Leonardo Da Vinci's favourite materials to use whilst drawing include; metal pencils, chalk, brush and ink and pens and tinted paper. (Debora Mends, http://www.howtodrawjourney.com/deborah-mends.html)

 



New final design

I got a bit bored of face charts so decided to sketch my final design from the side view. Face chart will fllow soon...

Okies so those were a few of my sketches of how I expected my final design to look on a person form the side view, the next few pictures are of the two chosen images I used for inspiration and the ace chart which I ammended which had elements of the elizabethan portrait I wanted to keep such as the rosy orangey red in the cheeks and the soft blending of colours combined with the shapes, straight lines and the colour black which I decided to include from the Alex Box picture.

Changing my design..

Over the last few days I have been thinking about changing my final design for the practical assessments. I have decided that The cheeks on my final design, where I used the contemporary image of the Queen of Hearts make up, didn't look very proffesional and gave the make up a bit of a face painted, childlike, messy look.  I have decided to take my design in a new direction by using my original choice of Elizabethan Portrait and then using this Contemporary make up Image by Alex Box.

The reason I have chosen this image is because in one of my previous practice designs, which I've now decided I prefer, I used straight lines and triangles which I thought gave the design a modern day almost futeristic look. This design interested me becuase it also uses a range of very precise straight lines and triangles which gives it a modern almost robotic look but still contains some Elizabethan style make up with the white face, white lashes and red lips. I also like the way the artwork has been added to make the model appear as though she is wearing an Elizabethan style collar.

My next job is to create a new New Elizabethan face chart using this image for inspiration. I am going to include tringles and straight lines to give the make up a fresh contemprary feel whilst keeping to the colour scheme and light eyemake up  from the Elizabethan portrait.

 

 

 

 

 

Feedback 19/11/14

Okay so in yesterdays lesson we also recieved feedbak on our blogs. I have recieved an email with the feedback at my solent unviversity email which I will be discussing on my blog however I am unable to log into my Solent email at the moment for some unknown reason so the review of my feedback will be coming to my blog shortly.

Elizabeth the Golden Age

In yesterdays lesson we watched the sequel to Elizabeth, Elizabeth the Golden age, again starring Kate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth. In this post I am once again going to take a look at and analyze the Elizabethan costume and make up from this film.
One Colour which was repeatedly worn throughout the movie by Elizabetha and her ladies in waiting was a pale babyish/sky blue. Th dresses in this colour were of typical Elizabethan style with smal taken in waistlines and wide flowing bottom sections which swept the ground, large puffy like sleeves and square necklines with frills of high necked fan like collars.
However on doing some resaerch it appears that wearing blue, and especially light blue, during the renaissance era signified a young marriageable woman. This would of course make sense since one of the main themes focused apon during the first half of the movie was the fact that Queen Elizabeth was still un-married and its is in one of the scenes where we see Elizabeth being shown portraits of possible suitors that she and her ladies in waiting are wearing this particular colour. And again shortly after, in another scene where Elizabeth is meeting one of the men she could potentially marry she is again wearing a baby blue dress.
Blue also apparently sybolises "heavenly grace" according to biblical symbolism, and is often associated with the Virgin Mary as she is often depicted as wearing blue. This theory ties in with the movies story line, as Queen Elizabeth was of course known as the Virgin Queen and this would symbolize her purity as an un-married woman.

Another colour Elizabeth wears during this film which has a powerful meaning is the colour Purple. Purple has throughout history been associated with Monarchy and regality and this is infact due to the fact that Queen Elizabeth I herself forbade anyone to wear the colour unless they were of royal blood. Purple was indeed a very expensive fabric colour to produce since the dye to create Purple came from a small mollusk which could only be found in Tyre regieon of the meditereanian sea and therefore was imported to Britain from Lebanon. due to its rarity and price Purple was a favoured choice of cloth for many rulers, spiritual leaders and monarchs worldwide including those from Eygypt, Rome and Persia.
The fact that Purple is linked directley to Monarchy is extremly significant during Elizabeth the Golden age, As Elizabeth is wearing a very brightly coloured Purple dress during scenes which alternate between her making descisons about the punishment of Mary Queen of Scotts who was being trialled for treason and the Spanish behind the plot who repeatedly refer to Elizabeth as the "bastard queen" The fact that she is wearing purple shows in her mind and to her country she is the one and only true and rightful ruler.

It is also interesting that throughout he first half of the film the outfits of Elizabeths ladies in waiting seem to consistentlty matched with the colour of her own garments.



http://renaissanceclothing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/meaning-of-renaissance-and-medieval.html
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/color-blue.htm
http://mightyminerva.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/big-purple-elizabeth.jpg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/raleigh_walter.shtml
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2011/9/28/1317226000474/Still-from-Elizabeth-The--007.jpg

Annas design for practical assessment

These are some pictures from the practice sessions on Monday of Annas design for the practical assessment next week. I think the design is very interesting and I like the choice of colours Anna has chosen.  I found the design quite hard to complete on time due to it containing many straight lines which were difficult to perfect and also found it quite difficult to blend some of the products to create the effect Anna wanted so will be practicing again before the assessment

Practicing my final design

Here is a picture of my final design for the contemporary Elizabethan look. I have taken the colours used in the Elizabethan portrait along with the very defined rosy cheeks and red lips and combined these with the contemporary image of the Queen of hearts, by using heart shaped lips and heart shaped red cheeks. I wanted the base of the face to be kept a natural skin shade to draw attention to the eyes which i used white supra colour and white eyeshadow to create a dusted on masquarade mask shape. I didnt want the whole face to be white or natural because I wanted to incorporate something from each picture, in the portrait the base make up on Elizabeths face is all white and in the modern image it is natural so I have gone for half of one and half of the other. I have blocked out the eyebrows using pritt stick to create an Elizabethan looking high forehead and used stick on pearls to decorate the forehead as Queen Elizabeth was known to be a big fan of wearing pearls. I am going to practice again tomorrow using the aqua colours as I feel shading and creating a soft line with supra colour make up is quite difficult.

New Elizabethans Natalie Portman

So the second part of our homework assignment this week was to name a person who we consider to be a New Elizabethan. We can have chosen this person due to the fact that their fashion sense or style reminds you of or is inspired by the Elizabethan's or someone whos personality or achievements reminds you of an Elizabethan. The person I chos as a New Elizabethan is the Actress Natalie Portman. The reason I have chosen Natalie Portman is because on doing my research I find she shares some similarites with Queen Elizabeth herself. Queen Elizabeth was well kown for being an extremely intelligent and highly educated woman, not only did she have a great knowledge of politics, she was multi lingual and a master of controlling her self image.
Natalie Portman who has been in the spotlight as a hollywood actress froma very young age herself is also a very well educated and intelligent young woman, not only has she studied at Harvard University and gained a Bachelors in Psychology she also speaks fluent Hebrew, French and Japanese. Not only are they similar in the fact that they are both smart and enthusiastic about learning, they both take pride in their public image. In this day and age it is increasigly unusual to hear of a child star turned successful adult star and not being in the news at some point for some kind of bad behaviour. However Natalie portman is one of the very few stars of today who has never been named or shamed in any kind of trouble. Ms Prtman comes across as a very level headed young woman who clearly cares about her self image and the impct it may have on her career.

http://www.natalieportman.com/?page_id=106
http://pulptastic.com/top-10-smartest-female-celebrities-wont-believe-number-6/
http://celebs.allwomenstalk.com/25-smartest-celebrities

The Taming Of The Shrew

In our Tuesday afternoon lesson with Sharon this week we watched the BBC television drama The Taming Of The Shrew, a modern adaption of the Shakespearian play also named The Taming Of The Shrew. Our homework assignment this week was to describe how two charecters from the BBC version although dressed in modern atire have been purposely styled to indicate their social class. Just as in Elizabethan times there are certain fashion styles, fabrics, colours and accessories which can be used as a visial aide not only to determine a characters place on the social scale but also tells alot about their charecters personality.
The two characters I have chosen to discus are Mrs Minola and Bianca Minola.
Mrs Minola throughout this programme is dressed in a range of outfits displaying fabrics and accessories which are used again and again to confirm in the mind of the audience that she is a woman of the upper class, who is clearly wealthy and who likes to flaunt her status at every opportunity her charecter is that of a womam who clearly enjoys the finer things in life and this is not only reflected via the vocabulary she uses and her accent, her actions and her mannorisms throughout the play but on a more subtle note purely by what she wears. she is seen to wear expensive fabrics such as velvet, outfits and fashion styles associated withe high class women such as heels, trouser suits, blazers and expensive looking accessories such as bags and pearls. Not to forget that pearls were a favourite of Queen Elizabeth the first also. Not only the style of what she wears tells us about her though, the colours she wears also depict high society and regality such as purple, a colour often associated with monarchy and cream and white which associated with purity. It can also be noted that on more than one occassion throughout the film she is seen to be wearing a rose could this have been a choice of the stylists for the production as a reference to the Tudor rose? As the original play was of course written in the Elizabethan era with Elizabeth being the last reigning Tudor monarch.

Bianca in the modern day adaption could be described as the picture of renaissance beauty which would have been the desired look for many European women during Elizabethan times. Although in Britain Queen Elizabeth was considered beautiful, iconic and the epitome of class and elegance and who wealthy English women of the era aspired to look like, in other parts of the the continent the fashion differed slighly. the Renaissance Era was a cultural revolution spanning from the early 1400's right up until 16th Century, which started in Florence Italy, and swiftly spread throughout Europe, during this period peoples perception of beauty, fashion, and the arts became an heavily influenced by the art and liturature of ancient civilisations such as Ancient Greece and Rome. The classification of beauty during these early civilisations was now the height of fashion and what every European lady aspired to become. A woman considered Beautiful during the renaissance period would be Voluptuous, over weight in fact in comparisson to what is considered to be an attactive weight by todays standards where there has been a complete turn around in the desired figure of a woman. Women of the renaissance would also have long, often wavy, natural looking hair often worn down and free flowing as a sign of femininity, as with Elizabethan beauty, fair hair was an "in trend" of the renaissance era with European striving to gain golden locks just as in britain, and again resorting to some rather drastic methods to achieve the sunkissed look. Another similarty when compared to Elizabethan fashion was a high forehead.
Although Bianca Minola in the BBC adaptation of the Taming Of The Shrew is not over weight by any means or blonde, she does in other ways fit the renaissance beauty description, with nautural beauty, pale skin, long flowing hair and sporting open neck, revealing garments, renaissance portraits were often painted nude or barely covered showing a great deal of skin. Bianca is clearly also a wealthy woman and this is shown to the audience through her wardrobe of garments made from fine materials such as silk and fur often teamed with elegant looking jewelry and expensive looking high heels.

Above a Renaissance portrait and below the Charecter of Bianca Minola played by Jime Murray in the 2005 BBC adaptation of The Taming Of The Shrew

http://www.thebeautybiz.com/78/article/history/beauty-through-ages-renaissance#articleContinued
http://sirl.stanford.edu/~bob/teaching/pdf/arth202/Haughton_Renaissance_beauty_JCosmeticDermatology04.pdf
http://stylecaster.com/timeline-sexy-defined-through-ages/
http://pictify.com/200033/venus-anadyomene-titian
http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/shakespeare/tamingoftheshrew/

New face chart

This is my latest face chart idea inspired by one of the contemporary images from Kats lesson on Monday, I did not take note of who the make up artist was or the fashion designer who the make up was designed for as I was still taking notes from the previous slide, so my next job is to track down the image and post it here. What I liked about the contemporary images was the use of straight lines rather than blending the make up so here I decided to work using triangles as I was able to make an exaggerated lip shape using 3 small triangles. Would then keep the faoundation of the face natural and apply a white misty mask shape foundation and powder around the eyes to represent the white ceruse make up of the Elizabthan era, white tipped lashes and red triangular cheeks to match the mouth. As I felt the look needed a liytle something extra I would apply a few pearl like jewels to the face above the btow line where the eyebrows will be blocked out and covered white.

Practice makes perfect

Helping out a friend for a photoshoot to practice my make up application skills