Pitching my ideas to the group

Today we had to pitch three designs for our ladies in waiting to the class. I was so nervous but it was actually really useful as it pointed me in the direction of where I need to go next with my design. 

My first initial design was inspired by the coronation portrait of Elizabeth. I love this painting because of its innocence, but I really loved the colour scheme and wanted to incorporate this into a design. I had this idea before I chose Elizabeth Brydges for my lady in waiting, although I do feel like it can relate to her before the death of the queen as she was a very fashionable lady who loved expensive things and was heavily influenced by the queen. 

After playing around with monochromatic make up, I did a gold monochromatic look which I loved! as well as looking pretty, it relates to the fact Elizabeth's reign was referred to as 'the golden age'. 

I also wanted to play around with the heart shape hair line that was so popular, so I drew on black and gold gems around the forehead to create that shape. I do really like this design, however i know that it may be tricky to source gems that are exactly what I am looking for, and sticking them on may waste time in the assessment. As well as this, I want to go down a darker route for my lady in waiting.

Elizabeth Brydges was a maid of honour to the queen, this meant that she wasn't married. She was also a gentlewoman of the bedchamber, which meant she was with Elizabeth at the most intimate times and was always around her beautiful and luxurious things. As a result of this, she developed a very expensive taste and was in a lot of debt when the queen died. So she was homeless with no husband to look after her and no way to pay off her debt. And to top it all off, she was actually in the room when the queen died which would have been very traumatic.  All of these changes at once would leave anyone pretty screwed up..

I wanted to use the same colour scheme as before,but created a much darker look. I did a big dramatic deep red and black eye- I know that red was a very expensive colour that she probably wouldn't have had access to after the queen's death. But as this is a contemporary Elizabethan, the use of red can represent anger, fear, danger and peassion, whilst still showing her love for expensive things.

I blocked out the eyebrows and drew a thin black line that instantly made her look distressed. I then did the same gold lips from my first design to relate it back to my original influences. 

I chose to do it on this face chart as I felt like the hair in front of the face was really appropriate- it shows that she doesn't have it all together.

For my third face chart I wanted to make it even darker, and incorporate the gems from my first design. As this needs to be a representation of Elizabeth after the queen's death, I removed the red gems and just did a layer of black gems. This is a representation of the deterioration of her mental state as well as her wealth. I also chose to us just black as it is a colour associated wih death and mourning.

As I wanted to make this look darker, I did a deep red lip lined with black- although I didnt really like the way it turned out as i felt it was borderline halloween make up. After trying this I think I will keep the gold lip as it looked a lot better and also fits with my original colour shceme.

Some feedback I got from my presentation was that I needed to try these on myself and see what works the best- play around with gems or maybe try stenciling them on. I also need to think about  hair design that it appropriate for Elizabeth. Most of the girls said they really liked the darker eye with a gold lip and liked my eyebrow idea.