“You want society to accept you, but you can’t even accept yourself.”
When I found a tutorial for Mystique’s makeup/body paint, I decided NOW was the perfect time to try. Just in time for Halloween!
Contact Pros and Cons
I had the chance to use some awesome lenses, so I wanted to include a quick Pro/Con for these specific contacts:
- Pro: LOOK AT THE COLOR!!! The fact that any color shows up on my dark brown eyes is impressive. But, these are SO vibrant and SO awesome! Can a person be in love with their contacts?
- Con: The pupils are very specific. Because they’re “cat eyes” they should be (key word here, “should”) sitting vertically. However, I noticed that with each blink, the contacts moved a bit. Within 10 minutes, the pupils were horizontal. Not quite what I was going for. Especially when the comments went from “Cool!” to, “Are you supposed to be a blue frog?”. Not quite the response I was going for.
When they’re sitting correctly they’re fantastic. However, a number of times I had to adjust or be told to adjust them for each shot was frustrating. I can only imagine how it would be at a convention. Especially when you don’t want to worry about looking in the mirror or asking each person taking your picture if your eyes are in straight. Or however you’d phrase that strange question.
As for the paint, I bought Mehron Paradise Pro Face Paint in two shades of blue. One shade was to be used for a base color, and one was to be used for highlights. While I am beyond pleased with the final results, I have a new found appreciation for body painters. This took me two hours, and it was only from the chest up. Granted, it was my first time using body paint, so it may not take as long with more practice. However, using body paint also had some pros and cons.
Body Paint Pros and Cons
The biggest pro was that the “take off” process was incredibly easy. This is always good when you decide to paint yourself blue on a work night and need to be less blue for work. Soap and water on a washcloth and I was back to my ole’ self.
My main con with this paint was that it did come off so easily while I was trying to apply it. Especially when I started adding in highlights with my second face paint. The base color wiped off too easily, and the highlight wouldn’t show up. This meant it took a long time of gently applying layers to get the vibrant color I wanted.
I asked a professional body painter I follow on YouTube (Madeyewlook) for suggestions, and she mentioned that I might have put on too much at once, causing streaks/smudging. I also may need to wait a bit longer for each layer to dry. She suggested looking into a sealing option to hopefully help with all the smudging next time, give the paint a better chance of setting.
I used a craft sponge to apply the paint during this… test. While it spread the color pretty well, I think a makeup sponge may absorb less paint in the long run and go on smoother.
Conclusion
All of the techniques used to create this look were done for the first time right before taking these shots. I’ll have to try a different approach next time and experiment a bit more. While it was a lot of work to create this look, only to take it off the same night, I feel it was successful. With a sealer to hold the color longer, this could be a really magnificent costume!
What do you guys think about costumes involving body paint? Too much work, or do you think it would be worth it if you could get crazy cool results?
This was so awesome Bri!!