Halloween Make-Up

Three Halloween films with interesting make-up are The Exorcist, Saw & The Corpse Bride.

The first Halloween character I have chosen to write about is Regan, the possessed girl from The Exorcist. I have chosen this look as it is simple to create, but really effective & scary.

To recreate this look I would start by mixing white greasepaint with a little green & little yellow & apply this over the whole face to make the skin tone look like that of someone who is ill, or in this case - possessed! I would then use a red greasepaint & apply this on the areas of the face where I'm going to create scars & wounds. To create the scars I would use dermawax, then mould this to the skin & use tweezers to split the wax to create the illusion of an open wound. I would then fill this with wound filler & dab a brown/wine coloured greasepaint over this with a cotton bud to look like dried blood. To finalise her possessed look I would use teeth paint to make the teeth look rotted & unclean & backcomb the hair a little, you could also use coloured contact lenses to look more possessed & scary.

The second look I have chosen is the puppet from Saw. I chose this as alot of people are freaked out by puppets & dolls & I thought this one is particularly creepy - great for Halloween.

To start this look I would mix white & grey greasepaint & apply this over the whole face, I would then use some highlighting & shading to create the illusion of the prominent cheekbones, narrow nose & furrowed brow - dermawax could be used to make the cheekbones & brow bone more prominent if desired. I would then apply black grease paint around the eyes to create the creepy, sunken in eyes. I would then apply a red greasepaint ontop of the black on the eyelids for the beady, doll eyes & add a black dot for the pupils & some white reflection lines to make it look more realistic. I would then draw the spiral designs on the cheek using red greasepaint & fill in the lips, extending the corner of the mouth upwards into the sinister, creepy smile. To make the moving chin, I would simply draw the lines down from the corner of the lips & make the lines meet together in a curving motion at the chin.

The third Halloween Character I have chosen is Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. I have chosen this as I think this look is very pretty, but eerie, & would look amazing when put together with the bride costume & a wilted looking bouqet of flowers.

To create this look, I would start by mixing blue & white greasepaints together to make the light blue shown in the picture & apply this over the whole face. I would then use a darker shade of blue around the eyes, nose & underneath the cheekbones to make them look sunken in. I would then draw the eyebrows on using black greasepaint, but I would place the eyebrows higher onto the forehead instead of the natural eyebrow - as this is an animated character, I would create the big cartoon eyes by applying white greasepaint over the whole eye. I would then use a dark blue greasepaint & apply this around a quarter over the 'eyes' to create her melancholy, sullen appearance. I would then use black to draw the pupil of the eye & outline the eyelid & eyelashes. The lips are very pale pink which can be mixed by using greasepaint & outlined using a lip liner which is a darker shade of pink. I could also create the scar which is seen on the side of her face using dermawax, but make it appear old & almost decomposed by using dark reds & browns instead of bright reds & fake blood. This is a great look for Halloween as it could be adapted to look more scary if desired by adding more wounds.

Halloween is one of my favourite holidays as it's the one time of the year you can dress up & have fun with make-up. This year I dressed up as a cat (original, I know) & wore all black which I completed with ears, a leopard print collar, fake eyelashes & I used face paint to create cat like features on my face.

In my Character Make-Up class, I chose to recreate a witch in order to practise some highlighting & shading (& to give people green faces!). I think John & Debbie made fabulous looking witches!

We also had a lot of fun walking around the college at breaktime with our Halloween make-up on & got alot of strange looks from some of the students! Happy Halloween :)