Acrobats and Kitty-Cats!

This week was an exercise in thick grease foundations, applying layer upon layer. Once we felt our models were sufficiently caked in it, we then set the base with enough of our Showface powder to cover the room in a fine mist. It all began on Monday with Theatre makeup. We were applying liner to open the eyes and giving the face some shape with extreme contouring to counteract the harsh lighting of theatre.

The layers continued with Cirque Du Soleil makeup. With Louise having toured with Cirque for two years we were just mesmerised by her stories and backstage photos. Upon returning to our work we discovered that our Cirque makeup was a challenging exercise of working with and mixing greases, aqua colours and powders. With this we were again learning the lesson of blend, blend and blend!

We spent a day catching up on our various projects like finishing the layers of our paper mache masks, colouring and styling our wigs and continuing to add texture to our sculptures. With a lot to do and never enough time we stayed very busy, covered in glues, newspaper, clay, hairspray or in the case of Nat and myself elbow-deep in Ajax removing colour hairspray from our makeup workstation. Nat's wig in particular looked amazing with the bright colours, so it was well worth it.

Then came the big finale of the week CATS!!!! More layers, more powders, more hairspray and more blend, blend, blend! The final makeup look was very animated and as we were promised, the look really came together with the wigs and costume. Everyone did so well and I think the photos of our fabulous furry felines speak for themselves!!!

Lea Jackson – Student