Stage makeup is about exploiting the natural features of your face to achieve a certain look, and usually does not work well if you try to fundamentally change your facial structure. This true of old age makeup as well. One of the central features of old age makeup is creating the look of wrinkles. After applying a foundation layer of makeup, Towson University in Towson, Md., recommends using a shade of makeup lighter than your natural skin tone to create a pale look. Stand in front of a well-let mirror and scrunch up your face in various ways, paying careful attention to where the creases appear. Smile, frown, squint your eyes, furrow your brow, pucker your lips and move them from side to side. The creases that you see are where wrinkles would naturally appear on your face. Using a brown pencil, draw lines in each of these places. Keep in mind how far away your audience will be while you are performing because when audiences are closer to you, your makeup can be more subtle. Audiences that are farther away require you to use more dramatic effects so people will see the aged look.
Adding shadows and highlights will enhance the definition of your drawn-on wrinkles and further the aging process. Your highlight color should be a couple of shades lighter than your foundation, and your shadow should be significantly darker. As you work, keep in mind that highlights will make things appear to pop out, while shadow will cause features to visually recede. With this in mind, add a bit of highlight against the lines you drew for wrinkles and blend gently out from the line. This will give them the look of depth. Other areas to highlight include under the arch of your brow, your nose and your cheekbones.
When choosing areas to shadow, think about how elderly people have certain areas of their face that may be more sunken-in than others. The most common places that this occurs are the hollows of the cheeks, the eye area and underneath the eyes. Use your shadow colors to create sunken cheeks and bags under the eyes. To create sunken eyes, add shadow to the crease of your eyelid. In all cases, be sure to blend your makeup to create a more natural look.
A good final detail for aging makeup is to incorporate unevenness in skin tone and the presence of age spots. This is most easily done with a stippling sponge and your shadow color. Lightly put some of your shadow color onto a stippling sponge--one with an uneven surface that will create small dots of makeup. Do not stipple your entire face evenly, as this will detract from the realism of your makeup. Instead, stipple a small area and then move to a different, random area. Use more stippled shadow in some areas than others, and leave some of your face entirely unstippled.