Giovanni: Day 2

Nothing to report on costume construction but how about some nose! Because Giovanni has a lot of it.


I completely agree, Maria. She probably married him for that nose. I would have. AHEM. Anyways, this is problematic because I have comparatively little:

So, time to whip out my main New Year's Resolution for 2011: Get Better at Makeup. Typically, I look at makeup last with costumes and it really shows. But I didn't want that to happen with Giovanni so here we are fooling around with plaster, Roma clay, and liquid latex six months before the deadline.

Taking a plaster cast of my face poured last summer for Prince Nuada, I played around with rough ideas last night but it wasn't right when I pulled the latex prosthesis in the morning. Something about it didn't seem... robust enough so I spent the entire morning redoing it while looking very closely at reference photos.





That's better... The secret was in the end of the nose and spreading the cartiledge out towards the nostrils. There's a good jowly shot too. Lord... But at least the nose looks good. So I went ahead, painted a few layers of latex on an orange to give me a good skin texturizer, pressed that into the Roma clay, smeared it all with Vaseline, built up the clay casting wall, and poured the plaster. Just waiting for the latex to dry as I type this.











The rest of the facial contours will be done with highlights and shadows to get that lean and hungry look his has. Unfortunately, I've got enough cheekbones for two or three people so extra attention will be required there. But it's looking good so far! I eventually want to get to the point where I can construct believable prosthetics based on individuals like this handsome fellow here:

Awesome.

Anyways, if Giovanni's nose turns out satisfactorily, I'll write up a complete tutorial, including the make-up bits but for now, everything I learned came from Richard Corson's Stage Makeup and Lars Carlsson's brilliant tutorials available here.

Lastly:
Oh, I can TOTALLY has. No updates for at least a week since I get to go away to learn things about museum display for work but I promise sewings the week after.