Evaluation

Evaluation

Working with wigs was the thing I was most looking forward to doing during my second year and it definitely did not disappoint. I feel like I have learned a lot about different types of wigs, how to style them and how to put them on. In the future I would like to work with different styles of wigs to see what other things I can create and I would love to learn more techniques for styling, especially men’s styles.

The thing I struggled with the most in this project was knotting a wig. I found learning how to make postiche pieces very interesting but when I attempted it myself I found it very difficult. I think the repetitive nature of it and concentrating on such a small object for a long period of time is something I am not very good at. I found it very frustrating and although I did improve a bit it took me a lot of time and so I did not complete my moustache. I was disappointed with this however I knew that to complete it would take me an incredibly long time and I felt the time would be better spent on doing other work for my project. In the future I would like to attempt making a postiche piece again or at least try knotting again but at the moment I don’t think it’s right for me and I think concentrating on my other work was the right thing to do in the end.

I enjoyed learning about the different decades and the hairstyles that were popular in these times. I feel that my skills in both hair and wig styling have improved during this project and I now feel more confident working with hair and wigs. There are some things I still need to practice a bit more such as punk hair and disco hair as I feel that these were my weakest hairstyles when I created them. I think this is mainly down to needing to practice the techniques I had not used before more, so I will do this in the future.

When I was styling my own acrylic wig for my assessments I found it difficult at first because the texture of the fake hair was different to anything I had used before so it took a while for me to work out the best ways to manipulate the hair. For example the hair was very difficult to section and to get the hair to go against the natural flow of the wig and in the direction I wanted it to go. In order to solve these problems I had to pin the hair very firmly and use steam to change the structure of the hair. I also changed my designs slightly so that they looked the best they could with the acrylic hair. For example I originally wanted to have traditional victory rolls in my 1940’s historical hairstyle but I found it very difficult to put them in my wig as the wig had very short hair at the front and so I decided to put curls in the sides of the hair instead.

 Another example of this was in my contemporary hairstyle I was going to have a very defined side parting however in a wig this was very difficult as when doing the parting you could see the base of the wig where you would usually see the scalp if you were working on someone’s natural hair. 

Therefore I combed the hair completely to one side instead of having the obvious parting.

Overall I was pleased with my final looks and I think they showed the level my skills are at well. I know I can make some improvements so I will use this in the future and keep practicing to improve my skills in wigwork.