Lucie Minty
Specialist Practice
Knotting the Wig
After research in books and looking at wigs used for film, theatre and fashion taking into consideration my wig is being made for a character for film I decided that fully knotting the wig would create the most natural and realistic effect. All the film wigs I had researched were also fully knotted wigs. Knotting a wig instead of creating wefts would ensure the wig would move and fall how natural hair does which is essential for Hd TV and cinema. I made some practice samples of knotting the human hair and horse hair before I started knotting on the wig. This helped me practice knotting the horse hair as I had never used it before and took me a while to get use to knotting with it as it was very corse and a lot thicker than human hair. Where the horse hair was so think I couldn't bulk knot it so the most I could knot at one time was one or two strands, which was slightly more time consuming. One of the reasons I chose to use horse hair in the wig was to add length and thickness, but I was aware that for a really natural appearance I needed to get the right ratio of human and horse hair. I also wanted to make sure that the two types of hair were blended well and evenly over the wig as I didn't want obvious bulks of horse hair in sections of the wig.
After practicing with small samples of me hackling the two types of hair together, I found this very time consuming as having a mixed bunch of hair in my hand I personally found very difficult to knot as the human hair was a lot thinner so this meant I could bulk knot with that but not the horse hair so would have to try and remove the horse from the bulk of human hair because wouldn't all fit it in knotting hook. I then tried knotting three holes with human hair then one with horse hair, this worked a lot better but I often loss count and I was worried the hair wouldn't be evenly mixed over both sides of the head. I then tried knotting in rough rows, three rows of human then one row of horse hair. I found this technique worked fastest and best for me as I could get into a flow of using the different types of hair and it meant I wasn't swapping between the types of hair as much. I found this technique also mixed the both types of hair naturally together well.
As I knotted further up the wig I increased the amount of rows knotted using human hair to the horse hair. This was because the horse hair was very corse it was harder to control and I didn't want it to be sitting un naturally on the head.
Trying the Wig on my Model
I tried the wig on my model and I was aware that there was still a 1cm gap I needed to finish knotting but found that I had knotted the front to thin, the wig sock was very visible and front of the wig looked very un natural. I had single knotted about 4-5cm back from the hair line. After trying the wig on my model I knew I needed to knot a lot more hair into the front but was unsure how much and I couldn't find a book explaining how far back so I booked a surgery tutorial with Sara.
Tutorial with Sara notes:
The front of the wig is way to thin.
Need to single knot 1-2cm back from the hair line maximum to create a natural looking hair line.
Look at a few different peoples natural hair line for reference and/or look at the front of wigs to see how far back they had been single knotted from hair line.
The rest of the wig looked fine.
The dreadlock samples used a lot of hair so if dread the hair in the wig I wont be left with much hair to style.
-I could attach dreadlocks to wig with clips or sew in.
I was aware with how thin and delicute the fine lace was from when I had practiced samples knotting the horse hair onto it and decided that that hourse hair was very thick to be knotting onto the lace and had to be pulled much more taugh when knotted than human hair. Keeping this in a mind and wanting to make the wig as natural looking as possible I mixed the horse hair out leading up to the fine lace and then only knotted human hair into the lace.
I looked at the selection of wigs in the university for reference on how far back I should single knot the hair which was really helpful.
I also then looked at a few natural hair lines to gain reference to help me know how the front of my wig should look and how to fade out the hair line to make it look as natural as possible.
After having the tutorial with Sara and looking at wigs and natural hair lines for reference the front of my wig looked much better. I added in bulk knotting bringing it much further forward, then single knotted 1.5cm back naturally adding some sparse knotting right at the front so the hair line didn't have an un natural looking straight edge.
I tried it on my model and the wig sock wasn't viable at all and the hair line looked natural on her head.
I completed the whole wig in 5 weeks, which took me an approximate total of 80hours.
The wig base: I made within a week and a half spending approximately 14-15 hours on.
Knotting the wig: I Completed in 3 and a half weeks. (Knotted the wig for two weeks then had to have a break from knotting it for 4 days because I got a bad back from not sitting properly and not taking breaks, after resting my back I continued to knot the wig completely it.) Spending an approximate total of 65 hours knotting it.
