Alienspiration

Though I've just treated myself to some more supplies that will help my next project from the Dick Smith's book I'm working through, I'm still on a bit of a makeup roll and wanted to do something else in the interim that was as colourful as the drag attempt, but on a different setting. So I went to space!

Well, no I didn't, (having had insufficient colours to try the lion I had in mind) I fancied trying a fruity alien  and googled myself silly. The picture I found (Anastasija Potjomkina created this futuristic alien geisha look on model Iska Ithil using Sugarpill Love+, Lumi and Darling.) was on a Pinterest page, but my palette needed to be darker due to the kit I had.

The end result was a little Starlight Express-meets-Metropolis, but I wanted to try some shading techniques using card (as I don't have any surgical tape) with a combination of paint and powder. 

Kit used: 

Inspirational pic found: (I'm fairly certain this uses a lot of airbrushing)

1. Starting with the usual clean and neutral face mugshot:

2. Cover everything inc. collar area in a layer of Snazaroo Clown White:

3. Having cut out a rough curve from an old cinema ticket, I stippled on some (possibly Sky) blue  Snazaroo paint with a sponge curving down roughly from the corner of my eye..

 

..though it didn't sit quite right on my face so I curved it up further.

4. Extending the blue up and round to include shading across the top of my brow and down the line of my throat, jawline and creating the shadows in my collar bone. At this point I'd also exaggerated my collar bone with more white painted on and smudged in with my fingers:

5. Not wanting my existing eyebrows to be red, I extended the blue upwards to include my brows and using the other side of the card, painted lines for new 'eyebrows' above, a fruity circle thing on my chin and 'gills':

6. Using my hot pink loose eyeshadow - and being very careful to blow off the excess - I filled in more of the eyebrows near the temple and brought it down to my lids, then shaded either side of my nose and filled in part of the chin circle:

7. Using a short, thick brush I shaded the edge of my jaw and down the centre of my throat, before adding a doll-like spot to each cheek and an upside-down triangle under my eyes to continue the line of the brow tapering down:

8. Lastly I mixed a little black to the red and went over the corners of my 'eyebrows' and the edge of my chin circle before filling in the lips with blue and edging the upper lip in red:

9. I dug out a wig to complete the look and voila:

Time taken: approx 90 mins (though as my housemates came to chuckle/ogle I got caught up yapping)

Review:

Though I'm pleased with the stippling use on top of a card 'barrier' which creates a more solid line that makes things easier, using one paint on top of another tends to wipe or dilute the first layer a little. Even letting it dry and adding powder between.

Using a hot pink powder on top really let the colours pop, though it was fraught with spilling danger which I had to correct a few times as a big brush wouldn't always remove it. I'm not sure what it is about necks that means the colour never seems to blend as smoothly in the creases. Perhaps that's just unavoidable when you're painting yourself?

Mostly the thing I've noticed here is the lopsidedness of certain lines i need to work harder on and what works on my face might not always translate compared to the inspirational pic I tried to copy from. 

A Nina Flowers inspired act

Ok so having tanned the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race in one sitting, I got a bit obsessed with runner up Drag Queen du jour Nina Flowers and her amazing androgynous makeup skills. So I woke up, decided I wanted to have a little fun - it's been far too long since I've given myself any time to do more of this- and try a woman-dressed-as-man-dressed-as-woman style of makeup just for fun!

I only used my normal make up with a little Snazaroo (clown) white for those cheek highlights so I didn't bother posting a pic of my kit. Ok, here's how I achieved my look:

1. Beginning with a clean face then adding a base coat layer of my normal foundation: Rimmel colour match in ivory:

2. Adding some sponged highlights to cheeks, eyebrows, t-zone and the bridge of my nose with a thinnish layer of Snazaroo Clown White and smudging it in with my fingers. I also added some shadows underneath my cheekbones and at my temples with another foundation a couple of shades darker than my usual one:

3. I decided the darker foundation just wasn't cutting it so I added my (only, pink) blusher with a thick short brush to the areas under my cheekbone, my jawline and my temples going into the hairline and down the sides of my nose to further exaggerate the contours:

4. Adding some pink eyeshadow with a fine, damp brush In a cats eye shape, exaggerated down my nose and towards my temples:

5. And the same again but a narrower version with black:

6. As I don't have any eyebrow wax I just had to make do with keeping the shape roughly my own. I tried doing a double eyebrow...

...but didn't like the way it looked from the front so I removed it with a wipe and went over the temple shading again to repair it.

7. Normal brows again, filled out with kohl, adding eyeliner to upper and lower lids and a couple of thick layers of mascara. I considered putting on some false eyelashes but the only pair I could find were a little too monstrously feathered and I thought they'd detract from the overall shape:

8. With the eyes finished, I moved onto the lips. Now, Drag Queens tend to have massive lips so I gave it a whirl far outside of my own tulip-shaped pout..

..hooo dear I took it a bit too far and look like a child whose eaten said lippy!

9. So I brought it back to just outside my lip line, added a little black to the corners of my mouth and a little white to the middle to create more of a contour and slathered the whole thing in a shitload of lip gloss:

10. Now to give myself a fierce updo to set the whole thing off and voila! The look is complete:

I'm pretty pleased with it overall, I think the only things that fell down were the blusher tone (I hardly use it so I'll have to get a better range) and my eyebrows. I figure with some wax and powder to set them I'll be able to create better shapes in future.

Time taken: approx 1 hour.