A few photos from Masquerotica I found on SFweekly today. I was assigned the task of decorating the cannibal savage performers. I’ve never finger painted so much in my life! What a fun night :)
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I’m so excited about this sexy event tomorrow! l’m honored to be assisting in painting some of the performers pre event, and you will be able to find me airbrushing partygoers in the VIP lounge all night! I hope to see you there :)
Some of my favorite pieces from Shaunda Brown’s burlesque themed “Dirty 30” birthday party on October 5th!It was a fantastic party and a great time was had by all :)
A few shots from a quick spray job I did on my roommate Emily before San Francisco’s Superhero Street Fair last Saturday! What a fun event! I hope to paint there next year :)
Some photos from last weekend’s airbrushing gigs! In the morning I helped a group of friends prepare for a Noah’s Ark themed party. I had a great time coming up with creative ways to paint killer bees, unicorns, and a gaggle of zebras! Then it was off to the Bottlecap Gazebo warehouse party fundraiser to paint the night away! I’m sharing a few of my favorite photos from each event. More days like Saturday, please!!
Video from my latest performance at San Francisco’s Precompression party on June 31st. I’ve wanted to hoop to the song, Fischerspooner’s “Mega C” for years, but it never seemed appropriate until now! Enjoy :)
My first post in awhile! I was extremely excited when I discovered yesterday that the fabulous Emily “Thundermouse” Haltom of I Can Dress Myself is my neighbor. Naturally, the first thing I did was schedule an airbrushing date for today! My new neighborhood (SF’s Mission district) is rife with beautiful street art to use as a backdrop, so we didn’t have to go far to get some great shots.
My inspiration for this look was Promise Tamang Phan’s video tutorial “Advanced Human Robot” . I loved the clean lines of the robot look, and instintively felt they’d make a great outline for airbrushing. To achieve Emily’s look, I started by painting in the chestpiece with black Kryolan facepaint. It might have made more sense to lay down the pink paint first, but I was worried that the water based face paint might bleed into the alcohol/water based pink, and decided to play it safe. I stopped the outline at the elbow, rather than continuing onto the hands, to make the look more functional.
Once the outline was completed, I filled in each block with neon pink Graftobian body paint. For some reason I didn’t fill in the blocks on Emily’s arms- wishing now that I had, because the black on the arm blocks doesn’t match up with the rest of the design. Oh well, lessons learned!
I used a variety of different stencils to fill in each block. I had the best luck with my fabric stencils (lace, mesh, fishnet, etc), since it’s really easy to pull them tight over the skin to get a clean line. Once I’d filled in each block, I re-traced the outline with face paint so it was nice and dark again. I added a little white at the center of each shoulder piece to really make it pop, and used neon pink puff paint to create the “screws” holding Emily together ;)
The back was more of an afterthought. I used my trusty tennis racquet to blend out the edges of the pink that bled over from the shoulder and neck portions, and then added a row of elipses in black and pink to highlight the spinal cord. I really like that detail, it looks really industrial and cool.
Since this design had a lot going on in the chest region, I wanted to keep the face simple. Some pink eyeshadow, black eyeliner, and some stenciling around the eye seemed like enough.
Many thanks to Emily’s roommate Jess for letting us use her fantastic camera! The pictures turned out WAY better than they would have on my crappy pocket Canon. Now that Emily and I are neighbors, you can look forward to many more awesome photo shoots!
xo
Bene
Some airbrushing from earlier today :)
Greetings Tumblites! This post documents a test run of a masquerade mask inspired look I plan to use for my roommate. She requested Mardi Gras/masquerade mask themed make-up for a work event tomorrow night, so I spent some time experimenting this afternoon.
My starting point was this tutorial from Beautiful You TV. The diamond block design seemed a bit more unique to me than the frequently seen eye mask, and appeared to be better suited for an airbrush, as more of the face could be decorated.
After applying some black eyeshadow and eyeliner (I’ve found that doing this before applying airbrush paint prevents the paint from creasing around the eye area) I drew out the blocks with face paint, as in the tutorial. Next I filled in each block with a base color, using a sharp edge (a piece of cardboard) to make the straight lines sharp. I used darker colors in the 2 center blocks (the ones around the eyes) and a light blue for the bottom of the face. To create the pattern on the “eye blocks”, I used a piece of netting I cut off the back of a cheap tank top from Ross. To create a nice contrast with the dark, I used a bright pearlized yellow (kind of like a neon gold!) over the purple, and a light blue, followed by white, over the dark blue.
The center block proved to be the most difficult. I messed up and had to paint over it a few times. I tried a few different centerpieces, which were either not centered, blurred around the edges, or too small! I finally settled on the white square, which is the center piece of a mandala stencil I made from a google image search.
The tutorial leaves the chin block without any detail, which to me looked kind of bare. I added some flair with a diamond pattered kitchen screen and the neon gold paint. A little right under each cheekbone, and a triangle under the lip. I think I added a little bit of white on top.
I didn’t have any suitable ribbon to create the lines between the blocks, so I experimented with using glitter. My first idea was to paint the lines with eyelash glue, and then shake glitter on top. This idea was quickly scrapped as it was WAY too time consuming, and would have gotten glitter all over the rest of my face, not to mention my room! Instead I used some glitter glue pens I had laying around to create the lines. My lines weren’t quite centered (a recurring problem for me) where they met on the bridge of my nose, so I added a sequin for disguise. I used the glitter glue to create some dots on the center piece, the area right under my lip, and the inner corner of my eye. I finished up with some black eyeliner and mascara to define my eyes.
The glitter glue looked great, but unfortunately as it dried, it contracted slightly, pulling my skin (you can kind of see this in the chin detail picture) and creating an uncomfortable burning sensation- ouch! Also, as you can see in the forehead detail photo, the glue peels off REALLY easily (I think taking off the wig also helped to mess it up- oops!). Back to the drawing board for the lines. My theory is that if I just stick to using the glitter glue for dots- maybe applied on top of a line drawn with face paint?- the contracting of the glue as it dried wouldn’t matter as much because it wouldn’t be stretched out as far. Or making smaller lines that weren’t all connected. I’ll keep you posted :)
My next installment will be the finished product on Natasha!
This is my girl Tash! So awesome to see someone I know pop up in my Tumblr feed :)
Tash Kouri of The Gyronauts rocking out!
Yay :) A post from my new blog on my experimentations with body painting. If you are interested in learning more about airbrushing experiments, check it out!
Shots from an airbrush session this afternoon with my lovely friend Marcia. I wanted to do something really bright and colorful, and to utilize the leopard print stencil I cut out yesterday. The inspiration for the work on the face came from this Avatar makeup tutorial from Promise Phan. I loved the design, but wanted to play with more colors. Since I was using an airbrush, as opposed to face paint, I substituted stencils for the drawn in stripes in Promise’s video. I’m still not confident applying liquid liner on anyone other than myself, so Marcia finished up the eyes herself. Pretty happy with the results!
