Ageing The Face

In this weeks practical lesson were learning how to age the face and hands, this is an important skill for me to learn as I am interested in working in television and film in the future, and ageing is a crucial skill to know how to undertake.

When you work on any character you need to think about the script, the age of the person that is required, the stage of the ageing process that the person would be in and the background of the character, for example their class, job and types of food that they may eat.

It is also important to remember to age the hands along with the face, this is a large give away that the ageing is fake!

The method of how to age the skin:

Add a small amount of moisturiser to the skin, this will help to blend out the base layer and blend the lines added to make the wrinkles.

Apply a thin layer of foundation to the skin, you can adjust the colour to the look  that you want to achieve. I used the Kryolan Foundation Palette. Make sure you apply a small amount of foundation on to the lips also as well as bringing it down the neck.

Get your model or make yourself smile widely, frown heavily, this will show you where the natural lines of the face appear. Focus on the forehead, around the mouth and eyes.

Apply a brown coloured product into these lines, or mix green, yellow and red, with a small brush. For this make up I used the Kryolan Supra Colour Palette.

After the application of each line blend it slightly to soften them and make them more realistic.

You can also add some of the brown colour around the eyes to darken the area and make it look more aged.

To age the eyebrows run a white product through them using a disposable mascara wand.

You can also use a stippling sponge along with the brown colour to achieve the effect of broken veins on the cheeks. In the pictures below I did not do this.

If you want to age the teeth on your model you can use teeth tints, you can get these in a range of effects such as tobacco stained and decayed teeth. I also did not use these in the pictures below.

It is important to remember that you are putting in effects that make up is usually used to conceal!