Current Obsessions #12

 

current obsessions 12Things have been a bit quite on here this week due to having a new house to decorate and shows to organise but I’m going to be posting more news and FAQs soon. I’m also thinking of doing step by steps posts showing how I decorate my house and where I found my furniture etc. so keep an eye out for those too.

This week I’m in love with my new Eustratia pockets mirrors and excited about getting new body jewellery to try out. I’ve been trying hard to find the right sofa and the best way to make silver lips look good (I’m going to be a robot in the TG Manchester show at the end of the month). I’m also sort of missing my fringe. I have a couple of shoot ideas I’ve been meaning to try all year and I really need to get round to them soon, everything seems to be moving along so slowly even though I’m always busy.

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Accessory moment no.5

This is an other look where the hair plays an important part. I realised I hadn’t posted an accessory moment with my new extensions yet so I used slightly less accessories than usual for this look. I think it’s a good example to show that less is more sometimes and you should just go with what works for your look.

What I used:

1. Layered spike necklace £5, Primark (occasionally this store surprises me)

2. Pheasant claw earrings, Sophie Adamson

3. Deer skull necklace, Eustratia

Bird claw earring.

For those who wanted to know, my septum ring is from bodyjewellershop.com I also get asked about this hair style a lot. The hair extensions I bought were lightest blonde, 22inches. I died them with a selection of Direction colours (lavender, lilac and turquoise) that I painted on and mixed into each other.You should try and get a blonde that matches the colour your hair goes when bleached, this will help the dyed extensions match your hair colour.

I left the hair dye on the extensions a lot longer than I do on my hair. Then rinsed and dried as usual.

The waves were created using a Babyliss Wave envy hair styler. I would suggest having a look on ebay for one of these as they are often cheaper.

New collab and Illustrated pictures

I was recently asked to jump in on a shoot my bf, Richard Ayres had arranged with Beverly Ann photography.

If you haven’t seen a lot of Beverly’s work around yet, I’m sure you will do in the near future. She is a promising young photographer with a clear vision, who also creates props to enhance her concept. I always admire photographers who like to be involved in more than just taking pictures, they are usually edgier with bigger ideas (which in turn means they might like to work with me on some of my big ideas).

For this shoot she had made these oversised demon hands which looked great combined with some black paint that she also applied herself. I love how the image below turned out and the black eyes were such a nice touch.

I was also given permission to edit some of the images from our shoot. I did one set with light pastel colours which I’m holding back until after its publication next month and an other which I can show you now.

I started off by just doing a beauty retouch and cleaning up a few things.

I did actually consider cropping this last one but decided I liked the large white space.

Models: Myself (Biomechanina) and the beautiful Jess Sevensin who you will most likely see featured here again soon!

After editing the photos as you see them above, I wanted to add something extra. I experimented a few times by making the background darker or adding some clouds but neither of these worked for me. I then remembered that I had wanted to produce a set of images with my own illustrations over the top of them for a while and these would be perfect.I did a bit of online research to find some examples that might inspire me. I have posted some on tumblr.

I have been working on some illustrations for an upcoming t-shirt line recently and most of my illustrations feature faces and insects. There were already faces in these images so I decided to draw insects, mainly moths, butterflies and dragonflies. I also added a couple of other natural and dark themes I felt were relevant.

The outcome:

What I really liked about this is that the drawings didn’t have to be great to look effective. Most of them were just quick doodles but they really transformed the feel of the images. I tried quite a lot of different things as it was my first attempt at something like this but I will definitely be doing more in the future and may produce some more concise sets with a preset theme. In these images the illustrations were drawn separately and applied onto the pictures using photoshop but I would also like to try printing the pictures out and painting on them as well as drawing electronically.

If anyone else tries something similar (or does any sort of work combining photography and illustration) I’d love to see!