The complete image

The Uncontrollability of Love

(To see the completed image visit www.flashyourjak.com )
So November has arrived and Shout Festival has begun. Tonight in fact is the official launch at the MAC centre in Birmingham. As part of SHOUT festival I was commissioned to make a piece of photographic art that would go on display around Birmingham in the form of posters.
After some thought thinking about what I wanted to do I decided to make my own construction based on a painting by my favorite artist Sir Edward Burne Jones.
The picture I chose was 'Cupid's Hunting Field' shown below.

This painting lightly comments on the fact that love is blind, using the mythological figure of Cupid to describe this. I took this as a starting point and began to apply it to myself creating a darker more ethereal version of the image. I decided I needed a set building so got the help of two BCU theatre and performance design students Sarah Verblis and Sarah Mcintyre. These girls helped bring everything together and worked through the night to help accomplish my vision.
All the maidens in the picture were replaced with men who were modeled by Justin Focus, Mike Simon, James Shroll, Daniel Ingram, Vincent Chase, and Kyle Finn. They all took to modeling different aspects of love, such as love lost and future love except for James Shroll who took the role of Cupid.
Each make-up look was completed by Gavin Pickle who was assisted by Connie Ball. He worked closely with the brief to create these amazing looks.
The images shall be on display in various locations around Birmingham. To see the completed image visit www.flashyourjak.com

Art of Darkness

Illamasqua have released a new collection this winter called Art of Darkness. They bring to you the colours of creatures from the night and from your nightmares. With beetle shell like liquid metals, and alchemic precision ink this is an inspiring collection, made to tempt out your darker alter ego.
The illamasqua website has an array of amazing new pictures some featured below.
Be sure to check out the video too, all on http://www.illamasqua.com/
Gavin Pickle was doing a make-up demonstration at Selfridges Birmingham last week, so I went do to film his dark arts. Check it out.

Homunculus

I like taking self portraits and it's something I would like to explore further as I don't really take many pictures of myself. Gavin from Irregular Attraction put up a competition called Pretty Different where he wanted people to send in their make-up pictures. I decided to head down to the studio and make a self portrait. As always the studio was fully booked, but also as usual it was empty so I just grabbed an empty space and set to work. I had intended to make something 'pretty different' to this but I ran out of time. I also recorded it so check out the video too (Right click and watch on youtube until I get my blog width sorted out!).
As a fan of animes such as Full Metal Alchemist this reminds me of a homunculus or some kind of creature. I'd love to be able to have skin that colour!

Surveillance on Cosmetics

I went out and about town with make-up artists Gavin Pickle and Roseanna Velin, and friend Seth Blaine. We went into loads of shops video blogging and generally causing a scene. Especially in superdrug where the woman over the tanoy was like 'Surveillance of Cosmetics please!' THE CHEEK OF IT!!! Here's the video, check it out and subscribe!

A busy time

So I've been behind on my blogging, and quite rightly so. Everything is up in the air at the moment. The 8 week challenge is definately on a hold at least for the next three weeks! I've been piling on the photoshoots as there isn't much time left. At the moment I have I've probably got 10 more to do and I'd quite like to reshoot one.
I've worked with another new Make-up artist Joolz who has done some wicked make-up for a couple of the shots and will be working again with me on Wednesday. I've also been working with Christina King who made this wicked crown for the Emperor shot, and she's going to be making a few more things to that I look forwards to.
On the 'Temperance' photoshoot James Lawrence Slattery and Gavin Pickle (Make-up Artist) did some modelling for me and Roseanna Velin did the Make-up. The costumes they're wearing were made by Kyle Perks who you can follow at www.Justin-Focus.co.uk
This image along with a short article will also be going into the next issue of Spaghetti Junction.
I think it's going well, and although very stressful at times I'm still enjoying it.
I shot judgement the other day, which is going to be the biggest nightmare to edit but here are some sample images I thought you might enjoy :)