As soon as I walked into the classroom, I had flashbacks of teaching HS science. On one table lie mostly edible foodstuffs I had at home: Karo syrup, food coloring, cornstarch, and vaseline. Nestled in between the groceries were various makeup products along with toilet paper, cotton balls and paper towels. Welcome to Special Effects Makeup Class!
Our first task was making blood. Using 3/4 of a cup of Karo syrup, I mixed in about a tablespoon of red food coloring, two drops of blue, a drop of green and a little hot water. Since the syrup had a much higher density than the water and food coloring, I stirred it for quite a while. Even after it was well mixed, I simply enjoyed the sensation of stirring the fake blood and continued doing so while the instructor moved on to the next thing: wax.
Back in high school, I remember taking a drama club field trip to a theatre where one guy conducted a “blood and guts” workshop. The one thing that made an impression on me was the pliable mortician’s wax. Of course, I’d asked our instructor about it. She’d never used it, but had used other professional waxes made for theatre makeup.
With a dollop of vaseline and a scoop of cornstarch, I folded the mixture with a plastic knife. This combination was so unbelievably sticky that I made sure mine was well mixed to the consistency of butter cream before touching it.
Even so, once I touched it, I essentially dove in, rolling it out in the palms of my hands. I should’ve eased into that. Had I tested just a little with my fingertips, I would’ve added more cornstarch into the cup. The second best thing to do was to dip the sticky ball of wax into the large bowl of cornstarch. I repeated that step several times until the stickiness disappeared without drying out the wax.
I then combined some foundation in a separate cup to match my complexion before adding it to the wax. As I did so, I wondered what I would have used if I’d been a darker Black person since there weren’t any darker foundations available. I probably would have had an awkward moment of asking how to darken the wax, using both foundation and food coloring.
My first project involved wax and cotton. I glued the cotton first, then the wax surrounding it, smoothing it down with a plastic knife to blend it better with my skin.
When I added the first layer of blood, this FX started to come alive. The instructor gave us words of wisdom, which guided us throughout the entire weekend workshop: blood makes everything better. So, I caked on the blood to hide the edges. At that point, I wished my fake blood was more gelatinous. That didn’t stop me from taking a picture and sending it to my family, however.
The only cosmetologist among us jazzed up her wounded hand with both eyeshadow and blood.
I entered class knowing I wanted to pull off a Ms. Sandman costume for my upcoming spoken word performance at The Austin Writers Roulette. My first attempt was to glue raw sugar to my skin. Since school glue contains water, the sugar dissolved and, together with my body heat, the result was more like a gluey scrub than a sandy-looking costume.
My next project was to cover my eyebrow. This time, I used one of those purple glue sticks and a disposable eyebrow brush. First, I brushed the eyebrow hairs up and applied glue. After allowing it to dry, I brushed the hairs downward and added more glue. Once that dried, I added my premixed foundation. One of the reasons to cover eyebrows is if latex will be applied. Gluing down eyebrows will protect them from being ripped out when removing the latex afterward.
The next project involved staples and coarse aquarium sand. Still figuring out how to render my Ms. Sandman look, I went to a pet store after Saturday’s class. They were out of the sand I wanted, but the woman who helped me happened to have a fine arts degree and recommended coarse aquarium sand since she’d used it for her kids’ zombie costume. Although I felt sad that such a degreed artist had to support herself working at a pet store, at that moment, I appreciated her expertise.
Of course, I drenched the gash with blood, flooding the sand, but it still looked good. The pet store sales associate said that the sand would look like bone fragments and it did once the excess blood oozed out. I could hardly wait to send that picture to my family, who were all at church at that time. I got some instant gratification when I walked to the front desk to show the intern. For a few seconds, he reacted as if I was actually injured, then he remembered which class I was in.
The instructor had also brought in liquid latex for me to try out. Our hypothesis was that the raw sugar wouldn’t dissolve in the latex and may hold better. That worked, but I still liked the coarse sand better, which was held in place with the latex. I also wanted to see if I was allergic to latex; so this patch test served several purposes.
Round two of the leg FX involved body paint, eyeshadow and wax. We made the body paint with shortening, cornstarch, food coloring and water. Unfortunately, we didn’t have actual zippers; so I painted a zipper, which looked more like DNA. Yet the real problem with my raised blood vessel was the fact I used wax. Far too heavy. I tried again this time with painted cotton. At least I could walk around with it.
My last project during the workshop was mermaid scales. I used prefab body paint, toilet paper and eyeshadow. First, I painted the black scale outlines, then I glued down the toilet paper. When I asked the instructor the best way to paint over toilet paper, she demoed the first scale, starting with body paint and dusting with shimmering eyeshadow to make the colors pop. The toilet paper itself added texture to the design.
The real test was on Sunday for the Roulette when I made my Ms. Sandman costume. Here’s the final result:
I’d set up a temporary makeup station on my patio because I wanted to limit the amount of sand in my apartment. I had such an enjoyable time painting that cool-to-the-touch latex on my face. The scary part was having to lean over the balcony backwards to dust my face with sand.
I allowed it to dry while I cleaned up the station before heading back inside to finish my makeup and put on my dress. I had a bra full of sand, but thank goodness none had entered any orifice except the sand on my lips occasionally got into my mouth. Yet that was worth the effort since dabbing lipstick on top of it made for a really interesting effect.
All that wonderful playtime made me about 15 minutes late to my own call time for the show–something which had never happened since I started the show back in 2012. Well, first time for everything! We still started on time and had a fabulous show.
