Last night (or early this morning), I went over for new avatars (and any old hands who are interested in a refresher) how to get a good casual/daytime look for your avatar, especially around the eyes, with tattoo makeup. This time, I’m taking on something more intense…yet the concepts and techniques are essentially the same.
Tattoo-layer makeup and attachment “stacking” are as important a tool as a good outfit, mesh or flexi or system, in achieving what you want to look like for any situation; the glorious variety of eyeshadows and lipsticks now available from in-world designers allow a Resident to create thousands of different facial looks with a little work and shopping. The quarterly Cosmetics Fair (going on now) offers a good place to start investing in your own makeup kit, and will give you as much versatility in your appearance as a shopping spree at a hairstylist.
And so, down to it….
Exotic / Glam / Fantasy styles
This will be a recapitulation of sorts of how I built a recent makeup I used. As before, I need a good concept of how I want to look. Since I kind of specialize in outré looks, this takes a good imagination, and a knowledge of what you have on hand (or where to get it). I tend to play it by ear as often as not, though, experimenting like a jazz musician with what I have on hand until I get a concept that works for the dress and hair I’m modeling. I do, however, also use the graphics that are often included in the package to jog my memory, instead of just trying on item after item. You might consider shooting photos of yourself with each separate item and building a directory of makeups on your computer, perhaps in a Word or OpenOffice Write document. If your collection is extensive, it’ll take time; but it will be time well invested.
Hair can be considered part of the process here, of course. Everything that goes on or frames your face will impact on what your final appearance is like. For the Delorean pants outfit from Sascha’s Designs which I wore just recently, I wanted something that reeked of glamour, but could be worn “on the street” with just a little modification; and I wanted to pay some tribute to the great models of the Sixties who wore outrageous face paint and hairstyles while modeling for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, such as Veruschka and Marisa Berenson.
1. As before, start with a clean face, unless your “foundation” makeup on the skin won’t interfere with what you’re going to add to it. In most cases, it won’t, but take a good look at what you have at each step before you commit. If you need, you can change skins to get a cleaner beginning. (This is one reason I like PXL for my skins; Hart Larsson offers “nude” skins as part of a package.) I want a larger hair for the look I’ve planned, again leaning back to something of a Sixties æsthetic. This style, The One from Vanity Hair, does it quite nicely.
2. My first layer here is Zibska’s Cutance Drop. Zib Scaggs specializes in items that stretch the bounds at the least, if not actually being avant-garde; and this combo of eyeshadow and drawn-in eyebrows lives up to her other work. The purple fills the entire upper eyelid, all the way up the orbit to the brow, and then the black pencil conceals and exaggerates the brow itself into something beyond. The black also gives a sort of framing to the purple, between the hyper-thick brow and the eye itself. The shadow contains its own liner in this case, and rings the lower eyelid with black; this saves a layer for (evil grin) other uses.
3. I’m looking for more than what the Zibska eyeshadow offers; so I next choose another color which lies in the triadic color palette founded here by the purple of the Zibska shadow. (Black is a neutral shade, and so doesn’t enter into the equation of the triadic colors. If you’re trying to figure “triadic colors” out, this interactive color wheel will help you see what I’m aiming for here.) I also want more sparkle closer to the eye itself. I choose a more normal type of eyeshadow, but with a glitter element in it: MONS Shimmer eyeshadow in a bright green, which is applied just above the lash line. This shadow, you see, also has a white component at the crease and the lower lid, giving the eyes pop with an opposite color to the liner itself.
4. I’m missing lashes here, and I want a final touch of color and effect. I go for a product that does it all: BOOM Liquid Glaze. The fatpack for this product has a large variety of colors available on one layer, and includes versions with and without lashes as part of the tattoo. I select “lashed silver,” which builds out the lashes and adds a final luxurious glint of silver to the eyes. You talk about pop? You have it now with this combo! I love this liner so much that it’s a regular in my modeling sessions.
5. The final touches. Again I save the lipstick for the last: Glamorize Dirty Babe Merlot. Glamorize prides itself on offering lots of shades for little money in their makeup kits, and Dirty Babe has been another workhorse for me, though I’ve begun finding other makers with excellent items that I’ll start playing with over time. The deep wine red works well with both the purple and green around my eyes, and the moist shine to the lips is an excellent final touch. As a last element, I change my eyes from my usual Sterling Artistry Jeweled eyes to their Discovery brand, which has five shades named for famous regions on the grid; this one is Garden of Dreams. The sum effect is an intense, intensely glamorous makeup palette that harks back in color and shape to the ancient Egyptians; and this is appropriate as well, as Egyptian palettes were a trend in the early Sixties, due to the release of the film Cleopatra.
All that’s needed now is to change my clothing and jewelry, and I’m set to head out to location! If I wanted to, though, I could add on a blusher, since I have a tattoo layer left over for use. I could also add prim lashes for more thickness, but I think that would be overdoing it with this makeup palette, and would probably conceal the silver and green of the upper shadow layers.
You beginners have all the tools you need now, except for a ready supply of lindens; fortunately, cosmetic tattoos are much more affordable than skin packs with built-in makeup, and much more versatile as well. I don’t say this to knock the skin artists, for it takes a lot of work to make good skins. However, the cost of skins was, for a long time, a limiter on my wants for the photo modeling I did for Around the Grid. Makeup tattoos allowed me to break out and do all sorts of things, from soft daytime looks to interstellar empresses, and my only limitations then were in purchasing clothes or costumes and in finding places to model that fitted my desires. (You cannot do everything in the studio!) So find yourself one or two good skins to start with, then start haunting cosmetic makers and buying fatpacks. And don’t be afraid to experiment until you find your own personal æsthetic!
