I'm jumping forward a little here, though not too far. By the time I worked on this make-up, I'd been studying at Art College for maybe a year or so. There's a bit of a story around that. I'm not sure it's worth telling here, but it was one of those key moments in my life.
Anyway,
so, I was at Art College. A comic book shop had opened in town. I found out about it from one of the
other students in my class. So I started buying my horror movie
magazines etc from there, though I did still go through to the one at
Middlesbrough as they often had old back issues that I would pick up. At
my local comic shop, I got chatting with a guy there, told him what I
was interested in, and he said he had a friend who was into all the same
things and that I should meet him. So I did. This was John. Meeting
John was another one of those key moments because it lead to so many
other things, and new friends. John and I became fast friends. He gave me some
much needed advice on sculpting and moulding. Told me where I could buy
latex and moulding plaster from, there was actually a place locally!
What I learned from him was invaluable. We're still very good friends to this
day, all these decades later.
This
make-up was done by John and myself, possibly during 1992 or 1993.
Somehow, though it was so long ago I can't remember, the local newspaper
found out about John and I and the odd things we made, so they asked if
we could do something quick for them and this was the result. Again it
was done using the build-up technique with latex and cotton wool, then
painted with grease paint make-up. We had a small piece on us featured
in the paper along with a photo of this. I had kept a copy of the news
paper with this in for many years as I'm something of a hoarder. But
sadly, though I'm not sure how, it has since been lost. I should look to
see if I can get a replacement from the paper's archives...
