Day of the dead

Day of the dead 

History

The Day of the dead is a holiday celebrated during November in central and northern Mexico; it is a day of honouring their deceased loved ones. The people who take part in this celebration believe on October 31, the gates of heaven open, and deceased children are allowed to visit their loved ones and families for 24 hours. On November 2, the adults are allowed to leave heaven to join their loved ones too. 

The families of the deceased  make large offerings of food and drink, this is very expensive but they will continue to do it because they believe that happy spirits will bring protection, good luck and wisdom to their families. During the day of November 2, the families take more offerings and sugar skulls to  the graves of their loved ones. They spend time at the graves; cleaning them, listening to music often played by the village band, have colourful gatherings and reminisce, this tradition keeps the village people close. 

Sugar Skulls

Sugar Skulls are made from 50 year old moulds for a competition at the Feria de Alfinique in Metope, Mexico. They represent a departed soul and have the name of the particular soul on the forehead of the skull, they are placed by the graveyard and the food offerings to honour the departed. 

This is my take on a sugar skull, I have recreated the makeup of a sugar skull on model Amy. I found it very hard to do the small and precise details of my design with the brushes I have. I have found I need to use much smaller brushes with fine tips to get the look I wanted, I have ordered some new ones to create these more precise details. Using super colour proved to be a mistake; the colour smudges and doesn't set very well even when fully powdered. Although I was happy overall with my finished design, next time I will use only aqua colour, so the colours are less like to run into each other or get smudged when using complimentary colours next to each other. The most difficult part to my design was making the small flower petals around the eyes. I used a black eye liner pencil, because I used super colour for the blue areas, applying the black over the top made the colours smudge. Next time I will use a liquid eye liner or use the full shape of a larger brush and create a block colour; printing the black onto the face instead of drawing the colour on in a wiping motion. 

  

I started my design by painting the face in white using my super colour mixed with Illamasqua white base, these two mixed together create a good smooth, and solid base ready to build upon. I then coloured in the eyes with blue super colour and an outline of orange using the aqua colour. The texture of aqua colour is more like a soft paste, mixed with water it turns into a product much like pace paint, this was ideal for the design I wanted to achieve because it enabled my application to be smooth and easy.  

I found the teeth very hard to do, I couldn't figure out the position of the teeth; where they should begin and end. One I had smudged the black for the jaw it then helped to measure where the teeth should begin, time was running out at this point so I would have worked on them a bit more, for this I need to work on my time management and make sure I have all parts of design down before I think about the detail.  

For this design I have used:

• Illamasqua satin primer  
• Kryolan white supercolour base 
• blue aqua colour kryolan for eyes 
• black aqua colour kryolan eyes and nose and smudged areas 
• blue aqua colour kryolan lips and patterns 
• orange aqua colour kryolan for patterns 

Health and safety:

Before I started the application of makeup,I ensured all my brushes were clean and there was no cross contamination in the products. Throughout the application I ensured I didn't cross contaminate the brushes or products by 'double dipping.' I assessed the clients skin and came to the conclusion she had normal skin with no contraindications. 

Day of the dead image research: 

These images have inspired me to use strong and bold colours for my sugar skill, I admire the amount of detail in both images and the use of colour and props used, not only on the face but all parts of the body visible in the images.  

http://girlgloss.com/day-of-the-dead-makeup-looks, http://lindsayhancock.com/category/makeup-2/,  26.10.15, (digital image) 

http://girlgloss.com/day-of-the-dead-makeup-looks/, https://www.facebook.com/JuliaKuzmenkoPhotography//blog/2012/11/dia-de-los-muertos-the-making-of-the-sugar-skull-image/, viewed 26.10.15, (digital image)