Make up tutorial- Dirty nails by Charlotte Clark

Firstly I removed all coloured nail varnish to ensure that we gain the correct colour for this effect. The first material you add is clear nail varnish. in which will protect our nails from the dark paints as I didn't want to stain my nails. You can use fake nails if you want so you can gain a jagged nail, however, I thought that I will use my own nails so that it will be more realistic therefore keep the continuity of our trailer consistent and believable.

These are the main colours I used; black, dark brown, orange/yellow, and red. I chose these colours as they would create a dirt soil like colour when I blended them onto my nail, which will occur within the upcoming stages of this tutorial. I used a fine tipped paintbrush to apply these paints so I did not go over the nail to much as I was going to do this later.

I used the black paint to underline each base of my nails so this would act as if the dirt as has been wedged firmly under them. This would suggest that the protagonist's desparation in trying to escape, but from what or who?
Once I added the black underline, I dampened the paintbrush in water, which I used to slowly smudged the black paint up the nail. This created a weaker black colour, which would aid me into rendering other colours to therefore create a dirt colour on my nails.

The forth stage, consists of using a blunt scalpel, which I ensured was blunt as I didn't want to cut under my nail. The dipped it in hot water and dabbed the tip of it into black and brown paint. I then carefully placed the blunt scalpel under each nail, therefore transferring the paint on the tip of it under my nails. This would create the illusion of mud and dirt being under the nails. The only negative aspect to this stage is on how to getting this paint off- I advise fairy liquid and a scrubber!

After applying paint under the ridge of my nails, I added a brown/yellow tinge colour to the nails, which I used a thicker paint brush so I could get every inch of my nails. This colour made my nails look a horrible dirt like colour, which was ideal for what I wanted to achieve. In places, I added too much paint onto my nails, which I removed by adding water the paint brush and smearing the excess off. This would make the colour weaker, which would look more effect as you don't want the nails to look as though it is just nail varnish. However, the excess paint I did not waste. I used this paint on the skin under nails so it would create the illusion of mud and dirt smearing up the finger tips as well.

This is the final outcome of this tutorial, which did work effectively. This as you can see would emphasis  how desperate the protagonist, within our trailer, wanted to leave the location. An improvement to this would be removing some of the paint on the skin or using a darker colour so that it would look more earth like. On the other hand, I could add real soil to this section by applying it when the paint is slightly damp and wet, therefore they would adhesive together and produce an even more effective outcome. I did this tutorial, so if we have any close up shots of hands it would make the production seem very realistic as the protagonists of the trailer would get filthy trying to escape a group of antagonists trying to kill you. This tutorial was also mainly for the final shot of the trailer, which we are debating on using or not. This is the lighter scene which would involve using a few close ups of the female's protagonist nails, which this make up would therefore reinforce the realism of the mise en scene during this situation.