Can anyone suggest how to age someone using theater makeup?

Question

I'm working on a stage production but have to age myself to look like I'm 60 or so. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The best bet is to create age-lines on your face using contrasting areas of highlight and shadow.

Cover your face with a natural or slightly sallow base (products by companies such as Ben Nye, Bob Kelly, and Mehron are excellent.) Use a lighter highlight color ("Ultralight" from Ben Nye) to draw in lines at the corner of the mouth, from each side of the nose down to near the outside of the lip, from the corner of the eye down and out (underneath the "bag"), and several across the forehead. Go back to each of these lines and draw in a shadow line OVER each line with a dark brown color such as "Character". Once the lines are drawn in use a clean brush to blend the highlight color down and the shadow color up. Make sure to leave a hard line where the two color touch at the center. Add color where needed (lips, cheeks, etc.) and powder with a translucent powder.

This is highly simplified - and really hard to describe without demonstrating. A wonderful resource is Richard Corson's book _Stage Makeup_. It's really expensive, though.

Answer 2

There are many ways to do aging.....
The most important is in the acting of the role. As a person ages, their physicality changes. Not just in large ways, like a Parkinson's Palsy effect, but also subtly. For example, the older you are the less flexible you are.

From a makeup standpoint, though, there are a few different thinks to consider:

Emphasizing highlights is more importnat that drawing lines: one of the others who posted to this question gave a good description of how to vary highlights and shadows in order to produce the effect of age lines. I won't repeat that person's good description. But I will note that, curiously enough, it's the highlights rather than the shadows which seem to give the biggest boost to the effect.

Skin texture coarsens with age: As we get older, our skin generally becomes rougher. Re-emphasize the highlights and shadows you've drawn with stippling. "Stippling " is making very small dots of a color -- sort of like facial pointillism. You can do it with a "stipple sponge", a coarse black sponge that is lightly coated with the desired color. The makeuip is then applied to the face by patting the sponge onto the onto the skin. You can buy stipple sponges where you buy makeup. This works well for two reasons -- the texture of the skin does coarsen over time, and the stippled highlights and shadows can give the effect of all of the innumerable other lines on an aging face that you aren't going to be able to do using the traditional method. I've actually found that you can readily produced an aged effect with only stippling, if it's done well.

Finally, don't go overboard! Sixty is not that old...a few suggestions of age along with good acting will be much more effective than a six hour makeup job.

There are more advanced methods, mostly used for film -- a thin layer of liquid latex can produce interesting wrinkle effects, and varoious "appliances" can be cosntriictude for major facial features such as ears or nose. But that's well into the professional realm.

Good luck.

Answer 3

Certanly wigs and skull caps, a pale makeup, deep lines for age in failing muscle controls and sagging of the face, etc. etc. etc.

Consider however that it's theater, "Acting" without question you should adopt mannerisms. Also consider that your audience may be anywhere from 30 feet distant to the back row of a large theater balcony, and they "GET IT"

I'm 63 and would be happy to loan ya my face, LOL.

Steven Wolf

BTW if the audience is too focused on your "look" then they are likely gonna be reading a BOOK as you perform.