Better lives blog post 2 – Impact of Better lives lectures on my courses
Throughout the whole two weeks of watching lectures I‘ve learnt many things which I’ve stated in my first blog post, And as a Hair, makeup and prosthetics for performance student I believe these lectures and what I’ve learnt from them will greatly improve my work and ideas.
The knowledge that I have learnt can be applied to my course through many ways, for example.
Within makeup for performance I will need to work on a range of different people portraying theatrical ideas through makeup by creating character designs and much more, However with the knowledge I’ve gained from the Culture studies lecture, I now have a better understanding that I shouldn’t Just stick to the norms of what my culture has taught me and sees as a stereotype, for example If I was to create a character design for a witch, My cultural stereotype portrays a witch as having Green skin, a long nose, multiple moles, a broomstick, cat and more, Which isn’t the same for other people’s cultures. Some cultures teach people that a witch looks like an everyday normal person, with a beautiful appearance instead of an ugly one.
Therefore, widening my culture and looking into other people’s cultures, by researching and understanding them will help shape my character designs making them culturally diverse.
As for the Nature lecture, when using different makeup products, like lipsticks, mac foundation, blush and more I could look more into where these products came from and how they were made, to see if I could find a more sustainable and more environmentally friendly alternative. Taking consideration for the environment and finding alternative options will help make my products last longer as the materials and ingredients used to make my product won’t have to abuse where it has come from, which links back to what I took from the culture studies lecture.
“However, what I took from this lecture was the sustainability of our culture and how if we stop using one thing like makeup for example something else would be used in it’s place therefore continuing a cycle, we’re already in.”
Therefore, even if I opt for a more environmentally friendly makeup alternative, it still won’t stop the cycle of something else being used in its place. For example, some makeup brands use Carmine in their lipsticks and blush products which is a bright red dye made from crushed scale insects, typically cochineal or Polish cochineal insects. If this product were substituted with something else to make it more environmentally friendly and sustainable that product would then be used and abused just like the crushed insects used for lipsticks and blushes.
However, even though this cycle will constantly change and continue, hopefully it will become a better cycle as it will be less damaging to the environment.
9th May 2020 @ 4:30 pm
Blog Post 4- Peer Review (Bianca Alexander) By Jenna Brown
In this blog post, Bianca talks about how her work during the better lives unit will shape her future learning. I feel that she has demonstrated a clear understanding of the better lives themes by explaining how she will put those themes into practice within her makeup, as well as gaining knowledge for the things she didn’t think about before. Bianca talks about how she has learnt to become more diverse within culture, explaining that she no longer wants to base anything off a stereotype, but she is inspired to develop her work in order for it to be more culturally diverse. Diversity being one of the key better lives themes, this shows to me that Bianca has a clear understanding of how she can better her work in the future which is a positive to her learning within this unit. She has shown an understanding of the themes within diversity and in doing so she’s stated not only what she will think about in the future, but how she will better her work to make it more diverse. In my opinion diversity is one of the most important themes when it comes to the creative industry, therefore once you have an understanding of how to make your work more diverse, the more people will be interested In the work. I believe that Bianca has demonstrated this within her work here. Later in her blog post, she mentioned the nature lecture and how the themes within that has changed her perspective on how she is going to see and use different products. Bianca mentioned that she will look into different products more to gain an understanding of what is suitable and what is not. This was because she explored more about the environment and certain materials that would be more sustainable for the earth. In doing so, I believe she has demonstrated the key theme of sustainability within her work, mainly because she stated that in the future, how she will look into and change if need be the products that she uses. This means that her makeup kit and work will become more sustainable which will not only help the environment, but also attract more clients/ work for her as this is something people look for sometimes. Building a more sustainable environment is very important because it helps people to live with resources making sure they have a good use and live within a community where less materials get wasted which helps the environment. Bianca has shown an understanding of this within her work because she is changing her products within her makeup kit. Lastly, I feel that one key theme within better lives that could’ve been talked about more is social responsibility. Bianca did somewhat show an understanding of social responsibility by learning how to be more sustainable within her products. However, she could have talked about this a bit more by explaining how she will take social responsibility into consideration to better her work in the future.