Lets get Physical
I received the most fun SFX Makeup and Wigs brief from photographer Cara Cormack. Body builders, 80s, big hair, fake suntan, oiled up muscles. I was in my element!
Cara wanted BIG hair but as it was a personal project we didn’t have a big budget. I like a challenge!I did what I always do when tasked with finding wigs and went straight to Am Wig Store which has the old BBC stock. I hired some synthetic wigs for volume. However, the issue with synthetic wigs is that you can’t heat them. You can only steam them.
The options arrived from the wig store and I was really happy with them but last minute, I decided that I wanted to have another option for the female bodybuilder on the day. Lots of the reference images were blonde so I wanted Cara to be able to have the choice to go blonde for the female bodybuilder if she wanted. I also wanted the ability to be able to backcomb the life out ofthe wig that I had and wouldn’t have been able to do this with the hired wig.
I dashed out and bought a blonde wig from Paks. It was £22 so didn’t break the bank but it was completely straight. After a bit of research I found that you could set wigs by steaming then so I got to work by putting rollers and pin curls into the wig to create height and movement.
It worked a treat! I managed to get loads of volume into the wig and I even painted in some roots to make the hair look more like real dyed hair rather than a wig. This really helped.
For the male bodybuilder, I had two wig options. One that really suited his colouring and the other option was a blonde wig which I added movement to for a shot where he is lying on his front.
The next challenge for this shoot was a shot where the male bodybuilder had to have the Malibu logo and “hot stuff” sunburnt onto his back. I created a stencil for this using the Malibu font and logo. I printed this out and cut it out with a craft knife.
On the day I had planned to use Skin Illustrator Glazing Spray but as I was applying through my airbrush I noticed the colour looked too green. Quick problem solving on set - I decided to use theSally Hansen Airbrush legs. Fortunately, I had several colours packed as it needed to be DARK.
I also used my all time favourite product which is Sunburn shade Pinky which is a product my Makeup. Its the perfect sunburn shade. Here is me at work.
So happy with how this turned out! I made several sizes to make sure I got the correct size on the bodybuilders back.
