First attempts; bruising and ageing

Welcome to my theatrical makeup design blog. To briefly explain how I started doing this, I have always had an underlying connection with theatre, my father was a singer/actor and whilst growing up I was involved in a drama group for several years. I studied Fine Art at university for 4 years, after which I was struggled to keep drawing and painting. But now that I work in the Kings and Festival Theatres (Edinburgh) I get the chance to see a lot of productions and this has rekindled my connection with theatre and has given me another creative outlet. Stage makeup seems to be quite a natural avenue to go down for me and has been an interest of mine for a long time.The first few posts I put up here may not show me looking my best, and I hope my technique will improve, however this gives an idea of what I've been up to and will at least track any progress I've made.

For the firsts few attempts I was limited to using what I had in my own makeup bag. One of the first basic looks I attempted was an old man/woman and then a bruised/black eye. Felt like a normal way to start off with as I'd already had a go at these during my drama club days.

I'll show the bruised pictures first to give an impression of what I look like in comparison to the "old lady" photos.

I didn't go overboard with this - now that I have a few more materials at hand I may be able to give the impression of swelling and more intensity to the bruises.

The old lady look could also be exaggerated now - by using natural creased in my face whilst making expressions this was quite a simple one to do. Contouring helped a lot in sallowing the cheeks and creating drooping saggy eyes.


Luckily I also had a volunteer model to practice on for my "old man" look.

I feel this one is slightly more exaggerated and more of a suitable theatrical look. Under stage lights though, it may appear too washed out.


The poor quality of the photos also plays a part here - I may need to hire/buy a camera in the future once I feel happy enough with my work. At the moment I've just got the camera on my phone which is not bad but doesn't deal with lighting very well and requires me to touch up the photos an awful lot on Live Photo Viewer.