[This page is part of a mirror of my Canvas learning system pages I created for my Drama 112 Intro Stage Makeup class at DVC. If you want to use this content for another Canvas class shell you can find it in Canvas Commons by searching for “Tara Maginnis” and you can download all or part of this directly into your shell with all the extra cool formatting of colored divider lines, right side embedded Giphy animations, etc. already put in, if you are working with a different system, it is ok to copy and paste from here, and then customize the pages as you need for your classes].
Explanation:
Famous Guys in Beards. Do a makeup design based on a well-known image of a guy in a beard/mustache. The best folks to pick are historical and newsworthy ones where you can get lots of images like Lenin, Darwin, Charles I, Frederick Douglas, Emperor Meiji, Dickens, Che Guevara, King Faisal, Osama Bin Laden, etc. or the Unibomber, members of ZZ Top, Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak.
Alternate “Adventures in Spirit Gum” Option:
If you have a wool allergy, or have had difficulty getting your crepe hair on time you can instead create a Fantasy Character with facial “Hair” of a substance other than crepe wool. For this to work, the substance must be light weight and thin enough to be capable of laying down in layers on top of each other like hair does. For example: feathers, strips of paper or mylar (chip bags), pipe cleaners or plastic. This doesn’t teach the skills as well as crepe hair will, but it will do in a pinch and is a technique you may want to know about for the (late in the semester) Mythical Fantasy Creature project which is coming up.
Overview:
This week you face the last and most difficult technical challenge of the “realism” portion of the semester: “laying hair”. It is also the itchiest lesson, as unless you choose the to stick an alternate substance (Latex, Duo, etc.) to your face, you will be gluing wool to your face with tree sap*. Once you are over this hump, and into the “design/fantasy” second half of the semester you can relax and play with your new superpowers (highlight/shadow, nose wax, spirit-gum and crepe hair) in designing and making more types of makeup all of which are easier, and offer more room for you to design and play doing creative stuff.
- Commercial Spirit Gum is a modern, refined form of one of the earliest glues known to man. In it’s primitive form, you can make your own spirit gum simply by dissolving chunks of tree sap in alcohol, and filtering out tree needles and dirt with a cloth or coffee filter. In the event of the apocalypse, get a jar, fill it with an inch of alcohol and drop in bits of dried tree sap. Add a small pebble or bird shot and shake and sit several times over a few days. When it is dissolved, filter the cloudy mixture through a cloth into another jar. Test it for adhesion. If it is too thin, let some of the alcohol evaporate, if it gets too thick later, add more alcohol. This is primal glue with many uses. We tried making this at DVC, and it works fine but smells like a pine tree!
Activities:
- You will watch one or more Crepe Hair Beard Videos.
- You will research and collect images of your famous bearded guy for reference.
- You will draw a color rendering of the makeup incorporating the beard and the appearance of said famous bearded dude.
- You will apply Crepe hair and makeup to your face to make your Famous Bearded Guy Makeup.
- You will do a short photo shoot (either with Tara in the hallway or on your own) to get fabulous photos of your makeup & rendering.
- You will upload your research, makeup and rendering photos to their respective assignment pages.