For this photoshoot I had to resort to using myself as a model again because of the recent pandemic COVID-19. For this shoot I wanted to focus on my SFX skills, as I love the art of transformation. For this shoot I styled a blonde wig and also made some latex prosthetic cheekbones for my surgical makeup look.
Surgery has always fascinated me when it came to transformations because of how extreme celebrities can go. Taking inspiration from Gay icon Amanda Lepore and also Joyceline Wildenstein, I wanted to try out and see how I would look if I was to emulate their extreme surgical look.
For this shoot I set up the lighting exactly like the previous Period Drama makeup look because I felt it was the perfect set up for my home studio, allowing my softbox lighting to bounce and light my face perfectly on my light reflector next to me while shooting. For this shoot my dad took my pictures under my guidance as I explained to him how I wanted the composition to look.
To achieve this, I used cling film to trace my natural cheekbones and then from my tracing built a sculpture for both cheekbones out of air-drying clay after that I used textured sponges so the texture on the sculptures looked skin like and realistic. Using liquid latex on a sponge I was able to create clean and thin layers of latex so that I could blend the prosthetics into my skin. Using a SFX illustrator alcohol active paint pallet I was then able to paint my prosthetic cheekbones and make them realistic.
I’m really happy with how this turned out as I was able to challenge myself by creating something I wasn’t normally comfortable doing. My love for transformations has always been my unique selling point when it comes to my makeup. Having my inspiration pictures near me while sculpting prosthetics for anatomical accuracy as this helped me massively as photography is always helpful for prosthetic work .
There is a lot of stigma when it comes to plastic surgery and people famous who are lucky enough to enhance their beauty through cosmetic alterations. I really wanted to play on this concept and create some botched cheekbones out of latex. I personally find botched looks a fascinating journey of what people have tried to strive but failed and that is perfection. Creating this drag SFX makeup look on my self, I was able to showcase my technical hair makeup and SFX skills as well as my photography skills. I feel my results for this shoot was a good result considering COVID-19 has made things difficult to access models and studios. I will definitely be exploring this concept again after the lockdown is over and will possibly be using perhaps 3 botched makeup looks in one shot with 3 models for an added narrative.
Stefan's pd blog 