About the Book:

The Face is a Canvas: The Design and Technique of Theatrical Makeup is a beautiful and practical book for designing dramatic character make-up. The author, Irene Corey, is a world-honoured designer for live theatre, film, and television, who literally changed the face of theatrical makeup and costumes during her more than half-century career. Although generations of professionals know her for her pioneering work where human faces have become sad-eyed hounds, arrogant lions, sly foxes or triumphant tortoises, the general public are more likely familiar with one of her biggest costume designs – Barney the Dinosaur.

Author Irene Corey's techniques open new realms of inspiration for the make-up artist and theatre student. She approaches make-up for the face as if it were a canvas, without limitations. She reinforces or ignores what nature has given. Her positive and direct style, her sense of humour, the remarkable assemblage of pictorial resources, her creative vision – all make this a valuable book in the classroom and in the studio dressing room.

The beginner will find the make-up exercise progression unparalleled. It soothes initial fears, opens realms of delight in discovery and mastery. Irene Corey lucidly traces the procedure of designing make-up using photographs as inspiration including the aging process, many cultures and time periods and non-human creatures, as well. From her private hoard of priceless pictures – photographs, illustrations, paintings – she shares more than 400, many in colour. She employs transparent overlays to present a unique and logical illustration of the relation between make-up and the underlying skull and muscles.

The Face is a Canvas is a proven text book for college and professional education with impressive endorsements by leading artists of the American Theatre.

What people say:

"Irene Corey's designs stir the imagination, magnetize the eye." — The New York Times

"Irene Corey is the designer of new paintorial techniques in theatrial production." — OGGI Magazine

"The sense of makeup being an art seems to imbue her every idea and suggestion." — Leon Brauner, Professor Emeritus, Indiana University at Bloomington

"She teaches one to look ... and to transform the ordinary into the magical." — Oscar Brockett, Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin

About the Author:

Irene Lockridge Corey (1925-2010) was a pioneer in the field of theatrical make-up and design. She earned two degrees from Baylor University: a bachelor's degree in 1947 and a master's in 1949. After teaching art at Baylor, she was chair of the art department at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky, which later gave her an honorary doctorate. She produced more than 50 theatrical productions including The Book of Job, which was produced off-Broadway and around the world. A co-founder of the Everyman Players touring company, she designed productions for Centenary College's theatre department and for productions across the globe. Her numerous honours include lifetime achievement awards from the Children's Theatre Foundation of America and United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), and she was accepted into the National Museum of Women in Art in Washington, D.C.