Pencil Part 3 - Taking Photos

I got set up for taking my photos with an idea of how i wanted them to look, i was worried i was maybe overthinking the child portrait and trying to add to many bits so i started off with something basic, a childs drawing and writing on my face and then added some other stuff, like pencil shavings as i went so i didnt go overboard.

I set my camera up on the tripod in my room using natural daylight and used this matte black paper i had lying around as my background. I would have liked to use fancy lighting in a darkened room to look more like the professional illamasqua pics but didnt really have the time to wait for amazon shipping.

drawing on your face is much more tricky than drawing on your hand

i added these pencil shavings to my hair in later photos

inspiration for my face doodling, makeup by Andrew Gallimore

 Using better quality lighting might have meant i had less photoshop to use for these images, i basically made two copies of the photo layered in photoshop one darkened with the burn tool for my black background the other lightened with dodge for my skin, i put dark on top of light and used a really soft eraser to rub out the areas i wanted lightened. After this i used the dodge tool again on the writing on my face just to make it bolder looking . 

The next image was my adult, basically pretty, conformist makeup look. I decided to go for a 'red lips and liner' look since there are 211,000 videos that come up in youtube search it must be pretty popular with people wanting to do makeup proper. This was relatively easy to achieve, as i was taking the photos i quite liked all the romantic old portrait style poses i was making.

 This image was edited much the same way as the child but as well as using dodge and burn i used a layer with the colour vibrancy dialed up and used the eraser again to make my lips and eyes more stand out, again i used the dodge tool at the end to darken up the eyeliner and eyelashes and a bit of eyebrow.

The final image was my creative rule breaking makeup, i took a bit of inspiration from Val Garland and Alex Box and some clowny makeup they had done before. The idea was to be a bit ugly, androgynous and messy with colour placement.

Val Garland for Vivienne Westwood, really liked the black lines in this

Image from Rankins Surface Attraction

The makeup took a bit to put on and it took a while to get off as well, i really liked how it turned out though, i used these kind of unflattering 70s disco bright blue eyes and bright pink blush around the outside of my face, my hair was up with a peek of my undercut looking quite boyish and as a last minute decision i found this blue lipgloss in a little tube and just smeared it over my neck and chest. Just like before i used the dodge and burn layers to get pale skin and a darker background, used vibrancy to jack up the intensity of the colours and a bit of dodge on the black lines.

I actually decided for my final display to have a version of the images cropped closer but you'll see that next.