I’m Not Dead pt 2

Having finally cornered my willing volunteer on a day when neither of us has been too ill to stand up (many long stories in that one – and thanks for this entry due to the lovely H)… here is part the second of I’m Not Dead.

For this one, I’ve been using Snazaroo water-based paints (the colours I used were Black, White, Bright Red, Bright Yellow and Bright Green – the last two are entirely optional though) and Special FX Wax, which is a bit like mortician’s wax only easier to apply and water-soluble so you can get it off more easily afterwards – you can get all of them direct from Snazaroo here http://www.snazaroo.com along with all kinds of other bits and pieces that are just so much fun to muck about with!  I’ve also been using the fake blood I made last time around, for which it’s really useful to have a dropper,  just for ease of application.  Next time you eat sushi (or as in my case are sat next to someone eating sushi), steal the little plastic soy sauce container from them once they’re done.  It’s so handy.

Anyway, what you need to do first is make a mound of the wax slightly longer than and wider than the cut, and smooth the edges in so you can’t see them as much.  This doesn’t have to be perfect, because it just looks a bit like you’re peeling skin (or so H told me!) but, y’know.  Enough for it to blend in with the real skin.  Like this:

And then with your spatula, or the blunt side of a table knife, you score down the middle to make the cut.  It doesn’t need to be as far down as the skin, depending on how much wax you’ve stuck on, and how deep you want it to look:

Then, you need to mix some of the Bright Red and Bright Yellow with a lot of White to make a very pale skin colour, and just dab it around the cut, over the wax and the skin, so that it makes the skin look paler – a bit like with the grease paint cuts before.  Then, you mix some Bright Red with a little bit of Bright Green and Black to make it less pinky and a bit darker, and paint right the way along the groove in the wax, up the sides and everything.  Like before, you can fleckle this with a bit of darker red (like the cool red, only you have to mix it yourself this time), by which time it looks a bit like this:

…and if you’re really going overboard, mix some Bright Red and Bright Yellow, and smudge that in a bit too:

And now you can use your blood, which is very exciting!  Just fill the cut right up.

The rest is history.  You’re welcome to think about blood trajectory, or smudge it about the place a bit, really, the more the merrier!  I have to say, by this point, H and I got a bit overexcited, so I lopped one of her fingers off and we went to terrify next door – whose face was an absolute picture.  Sadly, however, she’s now got the hang of the fact that any horrific injuries on our corridor tend to be something to do with me.  Oh well.  Fun while it lasted.

(We splashed a bit more blood on after the photo and it looked a lot better, promise!)

Water-based, painty love xx

I’m Not Dead pt 1

Sorry I’ve not been about for a particularly long time!  I’ve been at the theatre, and with this in mind, thought my first post back should be theatrical.  And the way my mind works is this: you can do it while sitting down, it involves making a mess of some description and I get to take photos: stage make-up it is.  And the most exciting type of stage make-up, of course, is the wound.  So the first thing I thought of, rather worryingly, is “I know!  I’ll slit my wrists!”

Now, I have some wax coming through soon (sat down the other day and spent £25 on water-based paint and pretty effects, yes, I know) so as soon as it does I’ll show you some raised wounds, but in the meantime, here is your basic grease paint cut and, of course, a nice bit of mucking about with blood.

This is my lovely paint set as it stands (Kryolan supracolor 12 grease paints, you can get them from Screenface, which has a fantastic website, isn’t too horrifically expensive and sends things off to you really quickly – think I got these in about twelve hours, which was nice):

So the first thing you need to do, once you’ve decided where your cut’s going to be is to mix some bright red and cool red (bottom two on the right) and draw yourself a line:

Then you thicken the line in the same colour, pointy up the ends a bit, and make it more uneven – obviously, when you have a real cut, it’s not that uneven, but quite surprisingly it looks more realistic if you do that.

(It still looks a bit rubbish at the moment but I promise it gets better!)

Then you mix white (bottom left) with a little very pale pink and you outline your cut to make it stand out.

Then you can smudge the white in a bit:

And then the fun part, for which you need a very thin brush.  Just splodge along one side of the cut a bit of black, and some cool red, and then along the other (if you’re getting quite excited about this now) a little bit of yellow.  And this makes your cut look something like this:

…which from a distance is quite enough to make someone do a double take!

Of course, if you’re really getting into it, you’ll want some fake blood, for which you need these:

Golden syrup, granulated coffee, plain flour, red food colouring.  Obviously the brands are utterly irrelevant, and I am terribly immoral – please don’t be like me and just go for first granulated coffee you can get your hands on, preferably go for Fairtrade but even if that’s too much effort don’t use Nestle… (in my defence I was very nearly late for a lecture and wasn’t really looking… but still…)

Anyway.  It’s laughably simple: mix some golden syrup with water so it’s about three parts syrup to one part water.  Stick a bit of food colouring in til it’s properly red – you’ll notice it goes a bit pinky when you stir it up the sides of the bowl, which is what the coffee is for.  Stick a spoonful of coffee in just to stop it being so pinky, stir it manically for a bit so the granules dissove, and then thicken it up with a spoonful of flour – you can do this by eye, really – until all the blobs have gone.  Shake it up a bit and then dribble it about the place.  Worry about trajectory angles if you’re really, really bothered, otherwise be like me and just wave your bloodied arm at as many of your flatmates happen to be in the vicinity at the time.  It really is too exciting!

Not Dead pt 2 to follow when my moulding wax comes through!  Much love xx