more wigs

carrying on the wig theme, here is my full 1920s wig, fixed on and dressed out, plus make up:

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post prosthetic wig off...

and so the post prosthetic come down began. The beginning of the week saw a group of 10 very tired makiage artistos...we were cut, bruised, and blistered, but very happy with our final prosthetic pieces.... we were thrust back into the main building with the rest of the fashion students ready to begin a week of advanced period make up and wigs. A trip to the National Portrait gallery on monday morning got us back in the mood, we stumbled around the air conditioned gallery bleary eyed and searching for fibre glass....but instead found a tundra of portraits to get the hair skills flowing. Back at school we partenered up and chose two eras to take inspiration from. Mine were the 18th century

and the 1920s.

we then spent a fair while trying on wigs just to find the perfect sized toupe for our model. Once this was done we then blocked them onto wig blocks, wet then down and began winding, pinning and setting in order to quaff our rugs into perfect period timepieced wigs:

They were then placed in the wig oven over night to cook... the next morning we took out all the rollers, rods and pins and dressed them out. The locks were then teased, backcombed, padded and sculpted into our various shapes, decoration added, hair netted left on the blocks over night.... The next day, the models hair was then wrapped and stocking capped, before applying the correct make up for the period. For the 1700s i chose a very natural version. Paled her skin down, lots of powder, filled the brows a little, pinkish terracotta blush to give a natural flushed/pinched look, soft lip tint and two beauty spots just to tie in the hair to the period. The wig was then lined up, pulled on pinned, glued, and dressed:

1920s to follow..... x

The final showdown!

So this was it. After 6 weeks hard graft, no other way to describe it, this is what i had worked up to.... My model Jody before hand, at 9am wednesday morning:

during the transformatory exercise:

and by 5pm with full Miss Haversham esque costume and false teeth

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and so it goes...

so now the foam latex is fluffed into the negative mould, the positive placed on top, squeezed together and bolted, then cooked in the oven over night....the moulds are then teased appart to reveal...tadah! our piece:

whilst this is going on, we are also filling out head moulds with liquid latex, which we coloured with acrylic paints the latex is swiched about inside the head mould to ensure even coverage, and no air bubbles

then left to dry overnight and.... DISASTER!!!

after another failed attempt, which lead to an interesting birthday present for my flatmate, i got a good one. This one was then painstakingly painted over 3 hours, and then hair punched for another hour and a half... i should also add that the other 7 head pieces were taken home and also painted one cold friday night from 6pm till 2am whilst drinking chai tea from a jam jar and listening to radio 4 plays...

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and so the story continues....

the wax sculpt then has to be cut into sections so that the separate areas can be removed:

once the cuts have been made, the cast is soaked in water to release them from the life cast (core):

once all pieces have been removed, mould making madness then begins!......creating positive and negative fibre glass casts.... no pics as this bit is pretty tedious and not so pretty...imagine lots of fibre glass, clay, sweating swearing and breathing respirators.... moulds must then be sanded...at home, in the bath if you like....

the wax clay sections are now melted and fixed onto the new positive moulds and more texturiseing takes place:

now these moulds are fibre glassed to create the new negative part of the mould (are you still following?...) once they have been fibre glassed, holes are drilled so that the pos and neg moulds can be fitted back together, and the space between the two is what makes our piece/mask...

the casts are then eased appart, lots of cut hands, achy fingers and gritted teeth as this happens....

the wax is peeled out and the cast cleaned

now we have the negative part to match the positive all 7 of them!

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No rest for the sculpters...

Today was spent talking to my dear goblin..im becomming rather attached to Shegoblin as the days go by. i spend around 5 and a half hours a day staring at her, and developing her into the perfect character.... i think this might be love... aswell as talking to the teracotta darling, i carried on perfecting overall shapes, sculpting a protruding spine, and then scratching the hell out of the whole thing...this feels slightly brutal and goes against every instinct, but it allows all the harsh lines to become soft and therefore more natural looking.... more pics Rrrregarde:

Sculpting

Once the water based sculpt was more or less finished i then moved on to copying it in wax based clay...alot easier said than done!.....bring out the callipers, tape measures, pokey sticks to test depth of clay, and a hell of a lot of modelling clay...and an oven to make the thumb blisteringly stiff clay, pliable and therefore, bearable.....

today was spent perfecting shapes, more measuring and in my case ears!...