Blog 2 – Influencing my future practise
The better lives themes have provided me with a lot to reflect on with regards to my future working practise. As a Make-up Artist, diversity in portfolios is key to show you can work with a wide range of individuals, as no two face is exactly the same, which is crucial to understand in the designing of hair and make-up looks. I think previous to watching the better lives lectures (specifically Shadhidha Bari on Diversity and Teleica Kirkland on Representation) I was ignorant to the true definition of diversity and how it applied to my creative practise, I considered diversity to mainly regard race and being able to show a range of skills that allowed me to work on different ethnicities, however I now understand that diversity is also about age, gender, disability, religion and beliefs as well as ethnicities. I am also more aware of the consequences of diversity not being represented and how that can affect the individuals. Teleica Kirkland talked about how misrepresentation and a lack of representation can lead to global stereotypes and an unachievable concept of ideal beauty that is stemmed from mainly models with Eurocentric features and this is not something I want to support but be part of changing. This also means ensuring that my make-up kit is inclusive, not only having products with a variety of shades such as using palettes over individual products, but also experimenting and researching products better for particular age groups and skin concerns. I also will do more research and experimentation around techniques for older adults as this is an area commonly overlooked by new make-up artists.
Another point that was made in lectures was about how when designing clothes, there is a standard diagram that is used which involves a model far taller than most people are and skinnier too, it was talked about how this is one of the things that shows we are not yet working properly with diversity. This made me consider how often I have used the standard face charts similar to the ones used in Mac and how that does not actually emulate a real face and is contributing to the unrealistic standard of beauty. My tutor often mentions that we should be either working on images of real faces or consider life drawing for designing looks which I now understand the reasoning behind this and how it will also assist my future work.