Opening Night

I'm sitting here, with a very old face! You see, I have to age myself for my role in the play. I wonder if this is what I'll look like in 40 years? Since my skin now looks like I've been smoking for 100 years, I doubt it. LOL

I've managed to get my make-up routing down to an hour and a half. I'm getting better and better at making my face look realistic. It's a long process..

Step 1) Cleanse my skin of all oils/make-up
Step 2) WHILE STRETCHING THE SKIN WITH ONE HAND...use the other hand to paint liquid latex on my eye lids, then blow dry with HOT dryer, then powder. I learned the hard way that I have to powder BEFORE releasing the stretched skin! If you do that, the skin sticks to itself, and I've been stuck with my eyelid folded in half. LOL

Step 3) step two on other eye lid, then lower eye/crowfoot area.

Step 4) Use spirit gum to adhere facial mole or wart to face. Today it's in the crease between my nose and cheek, and has a hair sticking out of it. Lovely!

Step 5) Paint spirit gum on labial folds, tapping with one finger until tacky.

Step 6) QUICKLY (before spirit gum dries) repeat on labial folds (those would be the ones from your nose to your mouth.) STRETCH FACE AS FAR AS POSSIBLE OR I WON'T GET GOOD WRINKLES!

Step 7) Repeat for other side of face.

Step 8) Repeat on forhead/bridge of nose.

DO NOT get liquid latex in eyelashes, eyebrows, or let any of your hair fall into the latex while you're drying it. If you do, plan on loosing that hair/eyelashes, or eyebrows.

Step 9) The powder I'm putting on is custom mixed (by me) to my skin color. Now that my faces is sufficiently stretched and wrinkled, I have to touch up all the makeup.

Step 10) add eyeliner.

step 11) color lips a natural color. I haven't tried wrinkling my lips yet, and don't think I'm going to!

Now my face is done. I wish I had a camera so I could take pictures of the process! Since I can't, here's a link to a site that shows the process. http://sapsema.org/broadbnd.html This man is older than me, so he's able to get better wrinkles than I am with the latex. Mine are mostly around my eyes and mouth, with a sort of leathery/weathered look to my cheek area and forehead.

Once this is done, eating is tough, since opening my mouth a lot makes the latex stretch and I start to loose wrinkles. So I start this at 3:00, and performance isn't done till around 9:00, and then I have to wait till I'm out of costume. It's often 10:00 before I can think about eating anything, and by then I'm STARVING!

Well, gotta run to opening night!