Katie: Making Make-up into Art

Full face Sunset
To be honest, it utterly and completely baffled me when I saw Katie’s masterpieces! It’s not because I hardly ever do any make-up myself (I’d like to think I’m quite confident with my brushes, and I think the canvas and the face would be pretty similar to work on, no? :P), but because of this undeniable fact: Katie’s talent is out of this world. She does magic with her cosmetics and her face the canvas. I browsed her gallery with such envy, why, I never can get my right hand and my left hand and my face and my, I don’t know, mascara to co-operate! Ooh, you’ll love this post, especially the girls ;) Enjoy!!! 

Tree Lips
Hello! I’m Katie. I do artistic make-up for fun, but my real profession is actually a Graphic Designer! I went to school for it and I’ve just recently graduated. I’m just starting up my own freelancing company, 89 Design, I’m currently working on my website and business cards. I’m also working part time at a little print shop in my town. I got into graphic design because I loved photography and I loved incorporating my own photography into my work. What I’d love to do in the future is do fashion photography, doing my own make-up and also designing the editorials as well. Why hire a photographer, make-up artist and graphic designer separately when you’ve got all of that in one lovely little package? 

What I do, is make make-up into actual art. Instead of doing a few pretty colours and calling it a day, I like to make scenes. I have done a few where it’s just colours when I’m doodling, but for the most part I like to make it a landscape. 

City Eyes

Outer Space
When I first start a piece, I have to think of an idea. Some ideas I think are going to look amazing, turn out to be complete crap. So I have to sit down and plan it out. Sometimes I use reference pictures, but for the most part it’s just in my mind. I pull out everything I need and sit at my “make-up station” aka my bathroom. I have a high magnification mirror with lights on the side so that I can see every detail. I put down a base colour first. Or if it’s a gradient, I do that. Then I’ll put the images on top. For the small details, I use pins (carefully). It usually takes about an hour for the really complicated stuff. Sometimes it can only take about 20 minutes! That’s if I don’t screw anything up. The one that took the longest would probably be my full face sunset. It was really difficult trying to get the details on the side of my face when I can only turn my head so far in the mirror. It would have been a thousand times easier if I had done it on someone else, but I didn’t have anyone at the time.
I usually try to go for a fantasy theme. Make it look magical! 

Winter Eyes

Halloween Eyes
My dream project would probably be for me to do my work on someone else. I kind of suck at doing it on other people, mainly because they’re too twitchy. When you’re doing make-up on yourself, it’s easy, but when you’re doing it on someone else and they see that you’re bringing a very sharp pin to their face, they’re not happy!

There are quite a few artists that inspire me, but from an early age, these are the ones that have stuck with me: Ansel Adams, Jerry Uelsmann and my mother.

The best advice I was ever giver was “Don’t sit on your ass and think “Oh I can’t do it”, just keep trying and eventually you’ll master it.”

Here is a tutorial I did for beginners, which shows how I did it and what I used. 


H.N.

7 comments:

T.H. said...

This is SOOOOO AWESOMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

annie said...

Woo, I'm gonna try the tutorial, this is really helpful <3 thank you xx

diane said...

You're amazing! O_O I want you to do my make-up every morning haha ;) xxxx

Anonymous said...

Your "Tree lips" is mesmerising, I can't take my eyes off it..

M. said...

I love your yellow/blue eye shadowing tutorial!!!! Perfect gradient :O x

Anonymous said...

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 Katie I think I'm in love with your super make-up skill :P

April said...

I am trying this gradient thing for valentine tomorrow! Thanks for sharing :-)

Post a Comment