Technical - Live Model technique practice.

For this practical we had to recreate an Elizabethan style using the techniques we've learnt on a live model, The brief of the Elizabethan look was that the front must be curled or frizzed and the back must be a bun either plaited or twisted. I chose to go with a heart shape using rats and a plaited bun at the back of the hair, I added a small roll at the front of the hair just to add something extra to the look.

I began with a consultation on my Model's hair because it's very different to working on the Katie head, you can get away with certain things on your block that you cant otherwise on a real person so it's important to take care of them whilst styling. Health and safety is a big issue.
Heated styling equipment can really cause some nasty burns so getting close to the roots without burning your model is tricky especially with steam from the hair and even burning the hair itself, the block head has chemically treated hair and can withstand a lot more heat than natural hair it's important to gauge the thickness and density of your models hair and also the condition. In my case my model had heavily bleached hair and it was fairly fine, but thick.
This caused me to work in smaller sections with less heat to make sure I didn't have to keep too much heat on the hair at any one time to create the effect I wanted.

I began by sectioning the hair that I did't need out of the way, so from the middle of the head to the back of the ears on both sides and clipped the back away and crimped horizontally from the ears up to the parting on both sides. 

I then sectioned again leaving myself an inch at the front to create a roll across the forehead and an inch of crimped hair I could use to wrap over my rat.
I then plaited a small section underneath where my rat was going to sit and secured it into place with grips.

 

I brushed out the hair covering the rat and slightly backcombed for texture before distributing it over the rat and gripping into place. I now have my heart shape.
The hair at the front I left in more of the crimped texture and created small sausages from one temple to the other and blended these together to create one roll across the forehead.

At the back of the hair I took one more small section of hair and crimped this and clipped it away to use later to lay over the top of the bun.
I plaited the remaining hair and twisted into place to create the plaited bun at the back which I preferred to the sleek one because the rest of the style was very textured and felt it needed more at the back.
I then took the crimped sections I left out earlier and placed them around the top of the bun just to again add more texture over the back of the hair and secured the ends around the underneath of my bun to hide any grips.

I really enjoyed creating this look and feel I had good control over what I wanted from beginning to end, I didn't find I had any huge problems with any aspect of the technical side of it in terms of using styling tools and backcombing etc. What I need to practice is moulding the crimped hair, because it has so much texture I did find myself with a lot of flyaways due to the crimping shortening the length of my models hair slightly, I simply used hairspray to keep these down but even in the final images you can see a few strays that still haven't been tamed.
I think time wise I did okay, I managed to finish the look within the time given of an hour and half. Preperation takes a lot of the time up as crimping is time consuming, keeping small sections helps with this because you don't have to heat as much hair at once and can move swiftly to the next section.
Working on real hair was a lot better than the katie head, I feel like I had a lot more control over it and as well you get feedback from the model so you can always check if they are okay with what you are doing.