Colouring
How do we make the wax look so much like skin?
Well, each head is coloured with several thin layers of oil paint that absorbs into the wax giving it the translucently of human skin.
Our colour palette is made up of a variety of colours; different tones of yellow, brown, red, purple, blue and green. And if there’s any shade we don’t have, we can always make it by mixing different colours together!
If the celebrity has had a sitting the colourist will use the colour samples collected during the sitting as a colour guide. We use a variety of photographs, full head shots and close ups of the different features - eyes, lips, nose etc. We begin by applying a thin brown-purple base to the head. We then use red and green colours to map out the different warm and cool areas of the face. The colourist studies the photographs and identifies the many colours that go together to make up the skin tone. The flesh colour is then created by building up thin layers of these colours. It is important to incorporate all of the minute details including veins and freckles. A ‘splatter’ technique is used to flick small dots of paint onto the head. The dots are blended together to sit on top of the detail and form another layer and different texture.
Eyelashes are inserted into the eye lid with a hot metal tool. The lashes are cut back and thinned to match the reference. We have a wide selection of lashes, of different lengths and thicknesses to choose from.
On occasion real make up is used on the wax, but mostly we use oil colour to look like make up. In this way the ‘make up’ is less likely to be damaged or rub off.
The final touch is to clean and gloss the eyes, teeth and lips. And there you have it, the celebrity comes to life!