How To: Be a Zombie
Emily here!
I am a self-taught horror make-up enthusiast! My background is in fine arts and theatre and so it wasn’t a stretch for me to become enthralled with the world of fake blood and liquid latex! Every year around Halloween I get lots of questions about my various make-up techniques and so, thanks to the lovely Amy here at Home James, I am sharing them through this blog. Over the next few weeks I’ll show you some of the stuff involved in creating the perfect gory look for your next Halloween party!
Zombies!
Now that you know all about cuts, burns and bruises you can put some of the techniques we used for those to use in a full face of makeup! Zombies! All zombies are different so feel free to play around with the colours and amount of latex or wax used! Have fun!
What You Need:
Cream Make-up: (The make-up pictured is the Ben-Nye master bruise wheel and death wheel)
Red
Dark Red
Dark Blue or Black
Yellow
Green
Light Blue
White
A pale skin tone foundation
Liquid Latex
Blood (The make-up pictured is Fresh Scab & Stage Bloo by Ben Nye )
Sponges
Brushes
Spatula tool
Setting Powder
Baby Oil
Spirit Gum
Step One
Start with your wax. You can use wax to create a bumpy, rotting skin look. Start off with small pieces flattened out, stick them to your face with a little bit of spirit gum. Then using your fingers (coated in a bit of baby oil) smooth down the edges. Don’t worry too much about getting everything perfect, rotting skin is definitely far from perfect.
Step Two
After you’re happy with your wax placement carve out parts of it with your spatula tool. Again no need to be finicky about it.
Step Three
Latex it all! Using your finger, begin to layer on latex over the wax and onto other parts of your face. Build up at least 5 or 6 layers.
Step Four
Next, start picking at your latex to create some holes and some falling off skin. You can use scissors to cut out some areas.
Step Five
Time to paint! Start by sponging on a layer of white mixed with your skin tone to give yourself an all over pale look. Next add a few blue, green and yellow patches. From here you can start adding some dark spots in the holes and edges in the latex, around the eyes and mouth and in the cracks and crevices. You can use black, dark red or even dark blue. Once you’re happy there, add some spots of brighter red as well. Basically you want to build up the colour to a rotted skin look, to feel free to play around. Greying out a lot of the white and adding green and yellow works well.
Step Six
Add your blood! I started with the gel based Fresh Scab, smearing it into the holes in the latex and using my finger to dab around the edges.
Step Seven (or 6.2 really)
This is optional but an effect I really like for zombies. With an edible liquid blood (the one used here is Ben Nye’s Stage Blood in a very convenient “Zesty Mint” flavour!) take a cap full into your mouth and then let it dribble out the sides. There’s a really gross video here if you want to see it in action click here. 😛 Remember to hold a paper towel under your chin to catch the drips!
And that’s it! You are officially a brain eating zombie!
Don’t forget to check out cuts here, bruises here and burns here!
