Although hair styling is not me strongest skill, it is certainly a keen
interest of mine, I have always been interested in wig work although the
process looks daunting and would require a level of patience I have never had
its something I am drawn to.
In all honesty I was sure I would be among the slowest in the class, the
level of intricate detailing and patience would show my flaws and a big concern
of mine was not being able to finish my work within the deadline, another fear
I had was I would not be able to create the looks I envisaged given time frame
without panicking and rushing my work which would lead to things going wrong.
When we started creating the historical and contemporary hairstyles, I fell
in love. the histories around each style, the influence and even society having
such a powerful influence sparked a passion to try harder then I thought was
possible. One area i particularly struggled was the actual process in how to
set the hair, furthermore how to actually dress out the hair and have it
looking perfect. even though we have a level of tools and products that were
not easily available when these styles were common it was still a struggle, It
must have been a lot more time consuming when these styles were worn (and
uncomfortable!)
Although I am by no means good, or even reasonably good at styling hair, I
take a lot longer than most of my class mates, however I rely on a good eye of
seeing how the hair style will unfold which guides me. the skills I have
learned in this unit, for me are life changing, although I have not mastered
any one skill in particular, it has given me the ability to toughly understand
the roots to a hairstyle, its underlying influences and knowing this the
ability to make the style unique to the head of hair I am working on. I have defiantly fallen in
love with the skill set I have been given and will continue to master them.
As I expected and dreaded knotting was an absolute struggle from beginning
to end, my lack of motor skills and disabilities I feel were a major hindrance.
these factors coupled with me being unable to take my time in slowly and meticulously
knotting each individual strand of hair with the delicate and patience required
made a very complex and hard task so much harder for me. it at times made me
feel helpless and although for a time become an obsession of mine (looking at
countless images in step by step tutorials) I still do not have a firm
understanding or even the skills to do this confidently (I sadly only realised
I can watch youtube videos which were so much easier for me to understand, but
by then it was not late).
Although knotting the wig was the hardest challenges i have faced so far,
when it came to creating my final idea for my wig and styling my wig out that
was one of my biggest challenges in this unit. I ran in to difficulties in preparing
the hair and putting it into rollers for the toughest job, this was mainly because
the length of hair for my wing was inconsistent and for me to get them into the
rollers was tough but to keep them in the rollers was a nightmare
For my final idea I picked the 1940’s as that is by far my favorite era.
The look I went for is the victory rolls and my contemporary was a modern twist
of a single victory roll with an inspired 1980’s frizz ponytail. When it came
styling my historical 1940’s Victory rolls it was a big challenge because the
wig had many different sizes of layers and creating that victory roll was not
as easy a initially expected.
One massive flaw that came back to haunt me was I did not really understand
the effect the length and layers of the hair would have in styling the hair and
so i should have taking this into account before picking the style I went for.
Had i taken these considerations into account i would have styled the hair
differently and have a much better final outcome
In the future I will defiantly take into serious consideration on these key
factors:
- length of the hair
- the style of the wig
- the length of the layers of hair on the wig
These factors would make a considerable difference to how easy or hard it
would be for me with my level of skill to effectively create the style i am
going for.
I was really happy with the curls on my wig, as mentioned early this part
of my work was difficult and therefore I expected bad results but I was shocked
when they came out better then I could of hoped for.
another area which gave me problems and highlighted my inexperience, was
due to the fact that my wig was too small for both of my models and it was
difficult for me to hide the hairline of the wig. i dealt with this by trying
to manipulate the hair forwards so it completes the look and hides it being too
small.
One very import lesson i learned, which is consistent in all of the
hairstyling i have worked with so far is that each scenario, cut, head of hair
is unique. the challenges with each style, hair, product and tool are unique
and more important than any one skill is the ability to adapt to the situation
and use your resources to make good any problems. i was forced to think on the
spot under pressure many times and this is usually an area in which i
personally collapse, the fact that i can carry on and fix what does not work
out is a very important lesson and skill I have attained. its helped my in
making my wig look a lot more natural.
A lot of the individual skills I learned were useful but the biggest skill
I learned was to tied them all together and just make it work, i have come very
far from having zero skill but I am by no means confident and have a long was
to go but that fact I genuinely enjoy practicing the skills I learned from this
unit, i know i have enjoyed each challenge even though i used to be scared of
problems and i learn from each one with makes grows my levels of skill and
confidence
