How to: Theatrical Ageing

Equipment:
-Black stipple sponge
-Orange stipple sponge
-Supra colour palette
-Foundation brush
-Base palette
-White skin base
-Big fluffy brush
-Small angled brush
-Disposable mascara wand
-Kryolan Tooth Enamel (https://uk.kryolan.com/product/tooth-enamel#nicotine)
-Cotton bud

Step by step:
1. Add a moisturiser to the skin to make the grease based products easier to blend over the top.
2. Add a foundation colour that is slightly paler than the natural skin colour. Use a foundation brush to apply this. Also add this colour over the lips.
3. Use a big fluffy brush to buff this colour into the skin so it looks as natural as possible.
4. Mix the yellow, blue and red from the supra colour palette to get a brown shade. You can also make this colour slightly more grey if you wanted with a bit of white added.
4. Ask the model to make really exaggerated facial expressions so that lines begin to show.
5. Take some of the brown colour on a small angled brush and lightly trace these lines all over the face and blend, where needed, with your fingers.
6. Also contour with this colour to make the face look more hollowed out and blend it all over with your fingers.
7. Mix a tiny bit of yellow with the white colour to make an off white colour and brush it through the eyebrows with a mascara wand. Brush the hair backwards for a messy/bushy effect.
8. Add some of this off white colour to the eyelashes with the mascara wand.
9. Use a tissue to dry the tooth/teeth and then, with a cotton bud, add some of the Kryolan tooth enamel in nicotine where desired. Make sure the model doesn't close her mouth until this is dry.

Close-up

Front on comparison

I only did half of the face so that I could compare both sides and clearly see a before and after. I am really pleased with how it came out. I love the darkened eyes and exaggerated wrinkles and I think the nicotine coloured tooth works really well. However when I was experimenting with the makeup look, I felt like I needed to look more into how peoples faces change when they get older because I wasn't completely sure what I was trying to achieve. I think it will be beneficial to do some research into how old people look and what happens to their skin and features so that I can portray more realistic versions of ageing. Looking at this image alone, I think to improve it I should have added more lines around the mouth and emphasised the wrinkles around her eyes more. I am also not happy with the lines around her nose because they look really out of place.