Practical 4: pallor, fever and sweat

Equipment:

• Stipple sponges
• Flicking brushes
• Beauty brushes

Products:

• Supra-Colour
• IPA
• Glycerine
• Eyelash glue
• Eye drops 

Health and Safety:

• Be very careful with alcohol around the eyes; the model's eyes should always be shut while working
• Clean and tidy workspace, cover model over before working
• Wash hands

Technique:

• Remove any real blemishes first. Don't be afraid to leave a model with no make-up on at all, but blemishes must be covered for continuity reasons as they may disappear in a week or so.
• Moisturise the skin to make it shiny and mix with the products better
• Dilute red Supra-Colour with IPA to make it more translucent
• Dab it onto the skin with a brush and blot/blend with fingertips
• Cover the nose, ears, neck, lips, go into the hairline, etc. as blotches are not limited to the face only and would not have hard edges
• Eyelash glue dabbed onto the lips when puckered will stretch and appear like dry skin when the lips are relaxed - you can tear the glue slightly to look like cracked/torn skin. Red Supra-Colour can be applied to look like soreness or blood, make sure to go into mouth slightly rather than just on outer lips
• Powder lips to look even dryer
• Dab glycerine onto face with a stipple sponge to leave drops of 'sweat' on the skin
• Flick IPA and Supra-Colour at the face to give the appearance of wetness/shine/sweat
• Squeeze eye drops into the inner corner of the eye to make them watery or tearful

This practice was really enjoyable and I was happy with the work I created. I think it will be useful for my project too as I wanted to include dry lips and a sweaty and blotchy complexion. My model was not comfortable with me trying eye drops so I didn't get a chance to do that, but I was happy with how everything else looked. I thought using the glycerine to appear like sweat was particularly effective, and I was pleased with how realistic the blotches I created were, as they were not too strongly coloured. I darkened the eye socket a little bit as I was following an image were the colour was stronger in this area. An improvement for next time would be to take the redness into the hairline slightly, to avoid harsh edges were the make-up suddenly stops.