Experiments With Gelatine

Here I have experimented with gelatine on different parts of the body to see what works best. I decided to place a few of them on the forehead as I didn't want the look to be too much and simple yet elaborate. I love the effect of the round gelatine spots, I feel it gives a slight alien effect in a very subtle way. Also l wanted the spots to replicate the scarification used in African tribes. I didn't want too use too much colour and just use a subtle hint of yellow to compliment the strong black across the cheeks and forehead. I feel if I chose to do this as my final look I would make the black strips smaller and add white to the lips instead of yellow as I feel the yellow looks washed out. I would like to have the hair     slicked back to have most of the attention on the face. 

Bleached Everything...

Since I was researching into Albino's and my design was inspired by the beauty of Albinos and the purity of their look, I decided to look into albino's being incorporated in fashion or looks that are inspired by albinos - such as bleaching of the eyebrows, eye lashes and hair against pale skin.

I absolutely love the contrasted beauty within this image. A complete opposite, yet both so beautiful.

Jan Schlegel

Jan Schlegel is a German photographer, mainly known as his beautiful portraits of a variety of cultures and distinctive styles. In the past years Schlegel have visited in 61 countries, in the search of dynamic, extraordinary people and their culture. Each and every image portrays a story, either being through their eyes or their cultural style. He opens our eyes to a world that we don't often see.  The one aspect I loved about Schlegel journey of the series is the fact that he would stay a few weeks at each tribe to understand their way of life. - To then give us a feeling of every person, their culture and uniqueness. Below are a couple of images from the series.

 A couple of my fav, especially the top image, the feeling and strong emotion behind the eyes. His quirky characteristics are unique and almost very humble as well. His deep wrinkles portray a story of his life, the strong exposure to sun every day and the events he has conquered through his life. the beautiful silver jewerelly contrast against his dark skin bringing out the blue in his eyes.

Young boy from the Sure Tribe

African Styled Fashion and Makeup

M Y  I N S P I R A T I O N 

                  

Ideas For My Final Designs

So as discussed before I wanted to shed light on albinos in african and embrace their beauty. I found you could never find an african albino with scarification, therefore want to experiment and create my own scarification on pale skin and maybe even make white skin even paler. 

S C A R I F I CA T I O N 

Another aspect I would like to bring to attention within my final images, is scarification. I feel I would like to create my own, like said above - Maybe creating one look that signifies the albino white skin and more of a westernised version of an african tribe. Then another look, focusing more on scarification. I had an idea of creating scars but with products, rather than creating 3D scars and also incorporating colour as I feel tribal like shapes on the face would look totally different on white skin rather than what we are use to seeing on darker skin.

A F R I C A N  T R I B A L  M A K E U P

    

African tribal make-up is a similar concept to scarification.

The tribal make-up can be linked to their tribe, religion or to symbolise a status. 

K A R O  T R I B E 

The Karo tribes are located in Southern Omo Valley in Ethiopia. They are known to be masters of traditional body and face painting. - A main aspect of their dance feast and ceremonies.

To paint their body they simply trace patterns using their hands and fingers with white chalk, black charcoal, yellow, ochre and red earth creating elaborate and beautiful patterns over the body. 

Albino Scarification?

So after researching into scarification and then finding my idea upon creating a westernised version of african style, I tried to see if I could find a black albino with scarification...I looked everywhere! It seems albinos in Africa are a huge outcast in their villages, as I already imagined. However I did not realise how bad it really was. If not kept safe inside by their families, some albinos are at risk of being killed. African doctors believe albino body parts bring good fortune and cure all manners of ills.
These horrific events are still being taking place and increasing the number of albinos killed are growing a huge amount in the last year.
Albinos are also at a high risk of developing skin cancer as their skin is highly sensitive to the sun as due to their condition, they lack skin pigmentation. - Unlike a normal human being, our skin has a pigment of a yellow or pink undertone. This condition also effects the hair and eyes.

As albino's are normally frowned upon within african culture, I wanted to highlight the beauty of Albino skin with the style of african culture.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1215949/The-albino-tribe-butchered-feed-gruesome-trade-magical-body-parts.html

Albino's in Africa

I found a huge amount of inspiration when searching about african tribes, I then came up with the idea of producing a look that was tribe like and inspired from the style and scarification of the african tribes but creating a westernised version as I felt it's not often you would see a white person with those types of scarring or with the way they dress. 

After thinking about creating an african look on white skin, I decided to research into black albinos. I found they were absolutely beautiful with the ghost white skin, bright white hair upon their head and the contrast and beauty against black skin was amazing. - To see complete opposites.