1930s Knitted Hair Portrait

Today I had my final shoot for my knitted hair portrait series. I asked Welly to model for me, a girl who I had met when helping out at an animal casting and she won it! I had always thought she was so interesting looking and very beautiful and was waiting for the right project to ask her to model.

For the hair piece I had looked at several images and actresses of the time. I liked the loose curls in the hair and didn't want to recreate the finger wave I had done for the 20s look. I went for a middle parting in coral red wool. I found that the piece was a little heavy on the right, so I knew I couldn't shoot it from straight on. I also felt Welly had a much better side profile so everything worked out. I felt shooting with the red gel was harder than the others, and the technician made red for me out of two colours.

It was probably the fastest shoot Louise and I had done, as we knew exactly what we were doing, the make up was quite simple and I knew how I wanted the lighting. I had some darker shadows in the hair to reference the images I had looked at in my research.

I think the hair piece could have been better. It needed more volume on the top, and if I had made longer pieces I could have doubled them up to make them visually stronger.