Feature: Sarah Mitchell

Feature: Sarah Mitchell

Interested in amazing Special Effects Makeup? This girl is incredibly talented in both special effects and fashion makeup designs. I first found her over at Makeupbee a while ago and was thoroughly impressed by her talents! So I'm going to share them with you! 

1. How did you get started with makeup?   

I started experimenting with makeup when I was about 3 years old. I would always sneak into my mother's makeup bag. Every since then I've been obsessed with it.

2. What is your all time favourite brand? What's your favourite product from that brand? 

My favourite brand is Ben Nye. Every product from them is high quality and highly pigmented. My favourite product from Ben Nye are the Cream Colours (pots & cream wheels).

3. Where do you get your inspiration from? 

Most of my inspiration comes from dreams that I have. I wake up in the middle of the night and sketch out ideas all the time. Also things like Cirque du Soleil and Sci-Fi movies inspire me.

4. Favourite tool?

My favourite tool would have to be my Paasche airbrush. It is the most useful tool with the special effects and creature design work that I have been focusing on. It gives quite realistic paint jobs on foam latex appliances and is time efficient.

5. Have you gone to school for this? Or is this more of a natural talent? 

I have gone to school for makeup. I went to Complections International Academy of Makeup Artistry, in Toronto. I graduated #1 top of my class. I feel that I have a lot of natural talent. School teaches you about how the industry works, they can not teach creativity.

6. Do you make a living off of your work or is it more of a hobby? 

I do make a living off of makeup artistry. Right now I am a freelance makeup artist. I am in the process of applying to special effects shops and a Union. This will allow me to work on feature films.

7. Which design of yours is your favourite?

My favourite design so far is my prosthetic lizard. It was my very first prosthetic, and turned out exactly how I planned for it to look. 

8. How long do your designs usually take? 

My designs usually take (depending on how intricate) between 15 minutes and 2 hours. Fashion looks and some special effects such as bruises and cuts are extremely fast. Prosthetic looks take much longer, usually closer to 2 hours.

 

9. How long have you been doing this?

I've been doing makeup literally my entire life. But I've only been doing it as a fully licensed artist since November.

10. Any advice for beginners?  

My main advice for a beginner would be to just be creative and have fun with it. Play around with different products and find what works best for you. Everyone develops their own style of how to do things. And, never let a negative comment discourage you. Also, take any opportunity to practice on other people. It really helps in the long run to know what works well for every face shape and skin tone.

Want to see more? Check out her Facebook Fanpage 

Super Mario Eyes

Super Mario Eyes

Holy crap it’s Mario! I’m actually in the works of doing a Mario themed photo shoot with a photographer, so I’m testing out different designs. I don’t think I’ll be using this one though. It took way too long and the details are way too tiny. The model’s eyes are tiny compared to my drag queen shaped eyes! 

 Ok, so we’ve got the coin counter, those hill things, the piranha plant, the ? box, a Goomba, step things with coins, Bullet Bill, an odd looking Mario in the tanooki suit (with wiggling tail), a mushroom, Koopa Troopa, Yoshi, the flag pole and finally the castle! Ahhh so many tiny little things. I’m quite proud of that Yoshi. Frig, that was grossly tiny. 

On a side note, I need your help guys! I've dropped down to 6th place in the Makeupbee/Sugarpill contest. It would mean the world to me if you voted for me! https://www.makeupbee.com/look.php?look_id=27754 A "like" is a vote!

Feature: sweetgreychaos

Feature: sweetgreychaos from DeviantArt

This girl is amazing! Her Nightmare Before Christmas design 

actually inspired me to do mine. I love how different her work is! 

She's extremely talented and I'm so happy to share her work with you guys! 

1. How did you get started with makeup?

When I was a kid, I liked to make bruises out of makeup- find reds and blues and blacks and mix them together to try and make big, ugly black eyes and wounds to freak out parents at slumber parties. I suppose most people turn to makeup to improve their looks- I wanted to mess ‘em up. That turned into making challenging Halloween faces, which turned into volunteering to paint faces for a local theater at their fundraising events. It wasn’t until college, the first year I had a room to myself, that I got bored at nights and thought “hey, I have some leftover Halloween paint and makeup… let’s do something funky.” It’s evolved into the beast it has become from there.

2. What is your all time favourite brand? What's your favourite product from that brand?

Generally I don’t use a lot of real makeup, to be honest. Even when I’m doing a street makeup look, I use a high quality face paint for liquid eyeliner. (Though I adore Milani brow powder- the one thing I use every day.) My favorite brand is Wolfe Brothers Face Art & FX. My favorite product from that brand are the hydrocolor essentials.

3. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Strong emotions, underlying bone structure and shapes that I find attractive or interesting, collages, movies/books/things I enjoy, appealing color combinations, and sometimes I get in the mood to do the ‘unpretty’- something unusual, scary, maybe even ugly.

4. Favourite tool?

I live by tiny, square-ended, stiff bristled paintbrushes. I must have fifty paintbrushes in my cup and I probably only ever use the same five over and over again.

5. Have you gone to school for this? Or is this more of a natural talent?

I don’t think there’s a school for the kind of crazy ephemera I play with, but if there is, point me to it! ^_^ Self taught, with far too much practice.

6. Do you make a living off of your work or is it more of a hobby?

Pure hobby, though I do a few paying jobs a year. It more than pays for the habit. In real life I’m a gifted education specialist and teacher.

7. Which design of yours is your favourite?

Hardest. Question. Ever! Since I create my pieces based on how I’m feeling, some of the images I’m so technically proud of, but they remind me of a hard time in my life. Due to that, they’re not my favorite... and vice versa- some look like a hot mess but I recall the wonderful emotions that spurred them into being. Oh, and my favorites are NEVER, EVER the most popular images. I do not have a bead on the vein of public interest. I guess right now, I’d have to say my favorite design right now is Triage. I was feeling so much… anger and loss and fear and love during this time, I look at this image, and it screams at me how complicated it was then. On top of that, it's something so different for me visually, and I'm able to rise above the emotion to be proud of it.

8. How long do your designs usually take?

Anywhere from half an hour to six. I’d say 75% of them take place during the span of a normal movie, however. I time my projects by what I’m watching during their creation.

9. How long have you been doing this?

In this fashion/style? Five years.

10. Any advice for beginners?

Respect your style. Give it time to develop, realize that it’s foundational and important and unique. Don’t compare yourself to others, but rather, use inspiration and the community of the people who have had more time to develop their own styles in order to grow. Try new things, and don’t be discouraged when they come out lookin’ like a damn mess. Increase your success rate by doubling your failure rate.

 

Want to see more of her amazing work? Visit her at sweetgreychaos 

Fire Flower - MakeupBee Competition

Fire Flower - MakeupBee Competition

This is my first entry into MakeupBee’s competition with Sugarpill. You can submit as many design as you like, so I apologize in advanced because I’m going to keep making them! XD 

The top 10 designs will be chosen by the most “likes”. So if you’d like to like this design here’s the link. https://www.makeupbee.com/look.php?look_id=27754&qbt=userlooks&qb_lookid=27754&qb_uid=15359

Pocahontas Eyes

Pocahontas Eyes

There were so many beautiful scenes to choose from! I decided to go with the "colours of the wind" scene and the "savages" scene. The left is the savages scene, where they're getting ready to fight each other. I adore how in the movie the smoke collides from either side and a bolt of lightning clashes in the middle. Then on the right is the colour of the wind scene with Pocahontas and John Smith on the cliff with all the leaves flowing across the wind.