Having watched Party Monster and been show some visual stimulus from Vogue Italia I was so inspired to get to work on our contemporary ideas for the Goodbye to Berlin project. I knew that we still had to base our ideas around another Cabaret character but I was excited to work with some crazy colours and styles.
I have chosen to use Sally Bowles as my contemporary character because I don't think her behaviour and lifestyle would be that different 50 years later. I thought about other empowered woman who loved to stand out and I thought of Lady Gaga and her recent album ArtPop where they who idea is about being yourself and wearing anything you want. In particular lots of colour and outrageous outfits. Katy Perry, especially her 'California girls' song where everything is made of sweets. This sparked an idea about Sally Bowles as she portrays a sickly sweet persona when she wants to and then switches off when she has had enough. I wanted to translate this through covering her lips in some sort of sweet because its around her lips where it would usually go but its like she is seeping sickly sweet words out of her mouth. It could also symbolise the amount of drugs that would have been taken and again its like she has taken so many that they are just falling out of her mouth. I thought this would be a perfect way to incorporate colour.
The image that I have to create has to express the character of Sally Bowles but in a contemporary way. This allows me to experiment with all the different styles in a modern culture to which there is no limit. When it comes to hair there is shape, texure, and colour to think about. One thing that Sally Bowles never had in all of her portrayals was long hair, so that is one thing I am going to chance. She is always seen as having very neat cropped hair so I want to do the exact opposite, give her bold, frizzy hair. I am going to experiment with crimping and backcombing as well as weaving the hair around pins and applying head and then backcombing. Either way to create an afro frizz. Another style that is popular in todays society is plaiting either large or tight intricate ones that go along the hairline into the middle of the head. I wanted to combing both styles to see how it looked and to give ultimate texure. When we were first briefed on this assignment so many ideas rushed to my head that I wanted to do them all. But I knew that I had to reign it in because it didn't want to crowd my image. So I decided to pick two main features, the hair and the lips. I will make both colourful and then leave the rest of the face porcelain and simple so that all of the attention falls on those two parts.
I didn't know how much freedom we had with our image but I came up with a small idea to really bring the character of Sally Bowles to life. This was to splash the face of my model with multi-coloured UV Paint and have an image in the dark so that all that was lit up was the paint. How could this relate? Well, Sally Bowles was a lady that came to life at night and the Berlin scene was mainly at night in the seedy clubs. She was also seen as having this mild multi personality that always surprised people. So if I were able to take an image of her fully lit with simple make-up and colourful hair and lips. Another in the dark with neon UV paint splashed on her face, cut the images vertically and merge them I could fully convey a contemporary Sally Bowles.
No comments:
Post a Comment