"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery" - Francis Bacon



Freelance Makeup Artist shooting for the stars...

Sunday 21 July 2013

The tracks of my tears...



Hi there!


I was up pretty early today feeling inspired so decided to create a new look (One of two that I have done already today - makeup marathon!) Again it's pretty dark but I was really happy with the end result.

I'd seen someone create some latex black tears online and it was really effective, so I decided to do something similar, but by just using makeup.

I used a very pale foundation and then set it with white powder. I used a light grey shadow and brown blush to contour my cheekbones, down the sides of my nose, under my jawline, on my temples and in my eye creases/sockets. Because I wanted it to look creepy I exaggerated this more then usual to give a more gaunt and chilling feel and then painted in my eyebrows with black paint.



To get the teardrop effect, I used a fine paint brush and loaded it up with lots of water after dipping it into black paint. I then packed this on to the lower lash line enough to create teardrops which naturally ran down my face. I painted in some more and covered my eyelids with black eyeshadow and smudged in, adding lots of black mascara.


For the lips, I used a vibrant red lipstick and smudged the bottom lip colour down onto my chin with my forefinger. I added some fake blood to the bottom lip and let it drip down in natural droplets as with the eyes. I put some red paint onto a bristle brush and flicked it onto my chin to look like blood splatter (mmhmm!)

Originally this is as far as I was going to go with the look, but I decided I wanted to make it that little bit more freaky (of course) and add fake blood droplets to under the eyes also. I threw on some more black using the same splatter technique I used with the lips and then finished off by added blackout contacts.

I'm not entirely sure what you would call this exactly, but it's a little like a zombie/corpse/possessed bride/starlet. However you may describe it, I liked it!

Let me know if you do too! :)
JLM



         

Wednesday 3 July 2013

Gotta look fly for 4th July...


YEEHAA!

It's been a little while since my last post, but fear not guys, I'm back! I've been swanning off around Italy sipping on Bellini's and devouring kilos of nachos along the East Coast of America ( I know, how awful) so please do forgive me...

It wasn't just the extra love handles though, I also picked up some new ideas for future makeup looks, and I've got a fair few up my sleeve that I'm pretty psyched about...

I absolutely love America and had another fantastic trip there this June. I would love the opportunity to live/work there (hint hint to any single American men who may be reading..), y'all are so darn fun and friendly! I couldn't help but therefore dedicate a look to one of their biggest and best holidays (and movies), Independence Day.

This was a fairly quick and simple, fun look which uses just good old fashion paint and brushes. I sketched a take on the stars and stripes flag first, choosing to enlarge one star so that it surrounded one eye and then sporadically dotting smaller ones around it. I drew this with a wave, giving it movement and making it look more interesting, avoiding straight horizontal lines which can look quite flat. This also tends to work better with your face (especially my curvaceous nose!) which naturally has more dimension/curve to it anyway.

I painted this straight onto my face with a fine brush and white paint. The large star around my eye was the trickiest part to do freehand, if you turn your head a slight different way, it suddenly becomes very uneven, plus you have the eyebrow and general hollow of the eye to deal with... The best thing to do is to stop often, step back and survey how it is looking, or take a photo - you often spot things you hadn't in the mirror! You can then go over the lines to alter if necessary (an easier way to do this would be to print and cut out a stencil and use that as a guide also of course). I then just blocked in the colours with a larger brush, keeping the lines as clean as possible.

To give this more depth and movement, I mixed slightly deeper shades of the red and blue and a very light grey to show some shading in the flag.

Happy 4th July USA!!

Peace out.
JLM x