Simple Prosthetics: Terminator

A Quick How To

If you click onto Youtube, you can see a million different videos telling you how to do prosthetics and face paint, both well and easily. This is not one of those videos. I am not a stage makeup type person, and I have very little skill (read: none) in this area. But yesterday, I stole the face of a friend of mine, and tried it out. It didn't go well, but neither did it go badly. If you are - like me - a student with very little budget, and not a lot of skill, but want to try this out, either for a costume or as an art form, this may be useful to you.

Stuffs You Will Need
Someone's face. You could use your own, but I have no idea how easy/ difficult it would be. If you do use your own face, I would recommend having a mirror.
A face mask. I used Vichy Normaderm 3 in 1, but to practise I used a much cheaper Neutrogena. I didn't change for any reason except using what I could find in my bathroom...What you want is a clay based mask, or any mask that sets completely hard and doesn't peel. Peely masks do not work well.
Tin foil. Bear with me, here.
Eyelash glue. I didn't use eyelash glue, but in looking back, I really wish I had because I did really struggle getting the tin foil to stay stuck to the model's face. I personally improvised using more of the mask, but I would not recommend it.
Paint brushes., preferably synthetic as hog hair could be quite abrasive. You could probably use makeup brushes. I would recommend minimum, having a small synthetic brush which is flat, perhaps as big as your little fingernail, if your hands are the same size as mine. About three milimetres across, maybe. I would also recommend having a much larger brush, for blending colours. I also used many other flat brushes, ranging in size, most of them about five milimetres across.
Face paints. As a teenager, I used ridiculously cheap ones from Partica, that came in a palette filled with colours I didn't need. I used - a light, blue toned red, a darkish reddy brown, a mediumish blue, orange, white and an egg yolk yellow, but it was helpful to have the whole spectrum for experimentation with colours.

Stuffs You Will Want
Facial Wipes. Even if you (for some messed up and creepy reason) never want to take this off, chances are, it will go somewhat wrong and you'll want to clean up bits of their face in the process.
Cotton Pads and Makeup Remover. Ditto.
Eyelash glue remover. This one is pretty important, because otherwise your model with have tinfoil stuck to their face for eternity, and you have no idea how fucking grim that would be. Eww. If you have to improvise, virgin olive oil on a cotton pad can totally work.
Eyeliner/ Lipliner. To mark out where you will stick the tinfoil. It isn't necessary, but it can help.

Start by drawing in where you want to tin foil to go. It is worth remembering that the masking with cover the edges, and so any shapes you want to make should be bigger than that. Lightly sketch them in with an eyeliner pencil. Consider carefully the contours of the face - how easy will it be to make tin foil fit their nose, how easily can you paint right in their eyelid? It is not the end of the world, however, if you do choose badly, as you can just peel off the leftovers and wipe it clean.

Cut out shapes of tinfoil, and cover the back of each one in the eyelash glue. You want it to be a neat spread, though, because

a) If it is too lumpy it will not dry evenly

b) If it is too lumpy it will look weird

and we don't want that to happen, now do we?

Then, stick it to their face. You want to smooth it out with your fingers so it is all flat and silvery. While that dries, you get out the face mask. Then, get out the mask - use it to built up around and cover the edges of the tin foil. Blend it outwards, towards the skin so that there is no sudden lump. You want it to look like their skin has been cut open to reveal the metal underneath. Because you might have to build up the mask quite thick this can take a while to dry.

Mix up a basic dark red colour. It should a brownish tone, basically like that of blood. Use this colour directly on the mask, so that it encircles the silver. You do not want it to go neat - instead use a flat brush to blotch it around a little. Add a blue and potentially a small amount of black to this colour, to get a darkish purpley-brown. Using a think brush, line the very inside of this read, and neatly blend out. In either of these two colours, feel free to draw in little veins, to make the look a little more realistic.

The second "tier" as it were, is to mix in some orange or yellow, to make a paler red colour, relatively close to the colour of the model's skin. For this you want to blend it far further. Begin with a thick layer of colour (blend it into the red with a brush dipped in water) and gradually lessen it so it gradually fades into their skin tone. You might want to up the yellow mixture as you blend it up, to give the illusion of infection.

To be honest, when it comes to the painting, it is more a sense of looking at reference images and deciding what makes the wound look the most gorey. I've seen wounds done with paler pink colours, which has also worked incredibly effectively.

On a slightly unrelated note, be sure to follow @IAmMorgan1000 on Twitter, he's my lovely friend who gave me his face in the name of my GCSE art coursework. 

As always, Bella Fern xx