Makeup School: Day 36 - Ageing With Latex

Final ageing with latex look for my makeup assessment

By far, this is one of the more painful experiences of makeup I've had to do. As a makeup artist, it wouldn't be fair to subject clients to things I've not even tried myself. So I underwent what could be described as a face peel. Ouch~

Putting liquid latex on the skin and having it removed afterwards, all in the name of ageing and special effects was. not. fun. Not only does liquid latex gives off strong fumes that actually stung my eyes, but it was the actual purposeful wrinkling of my face that had me crying inside. We girls spend decades trying to preserve our youthful looks and here I was actively creating wrinkles!

Then there was the removal process, where we were possibly removing a layer of skin from our face in trying to unstick the dried latex.

1st attempt at ageing with latex on Cassie

To make matters worse, the skin retained temporary wrinkles after the latex removal. Being young, it unwrinkled pretty fast, but I can't help but think how many years of youthfulness this would have taken off me in consequence. :(

Thank god my assessments for this was over! Given I know how this made me feel, I'm wincing for the pain of others every time I had to put this on someone else.

The process itself wasn't that hard. I ripped a hydra sponge into little pieces and dipped them into a small dish of liquid latex. After sponging it on my hand to get the desired thickness, I then applied it to sections of a model's stretched face. The model continues to hold their skin taunt while I dry the latex with a hair dryer set to cool air, and set it with translucent powder.

2nd attempt at ageing with latex on Mel

Wash, rinse, and repeat for each section of the face.

After the whole face was covered in an initial layer, a second and potentially third layer would be done to give the wrinkles a more pronounced effect.

The powdery effect would be wiped off with Castor Sealor, blotted, and then foundation applied over the top. The look is finished off with dots of age spots, broken capillaries, whitening hair, and drying lips (toning down the red in lips).

If done well, this sort of makeup can work for film and TV. However, it's a lot hard to do wrinkle young skin, it's not as effective working on a 20yo as on a 50yo, trying to get them to look 80.

I also ruined two of my lovely powder brushes because I stupidly dipped them in the latex bowl instead of the powder bowl that was right next to it. *cries* Sure, they're just brushes, but to a makeup artist, they were my babies... :(

xxEva