The catwoman body painting gig was a success.
I just got to preview the photos and they're AWESOME. Wowza. The photographer is having a gallery opening on Oct 6, and I'm absolutely going. I can't wait to see them at HUGE size. I would post them here but I promised not to "leak" them so .. you'll just have to wait. Or come to the gallery opening. 111 Minna. October 6. 5-9.
The whole experience was a little odd. We coordinated on facebook, with the photographer taking point and letting the rest of us do our thing. It was all very professional, I was all excited to work with professionals and turn out a professional product.
The house we were in was amazing.. the stylist was a perfect flamboyant San Francisco queen, and the model was raunchy and energetic and loads of fun. The photographer was a rather typical disorganized artist-type, but the shots he pulled off (and the expensive Soma Loft where he lives) prove to me that he sure knows his stuff. Here he is: Tim Williamson.
The paint job took about 3 hours. I designed a slinky catsuit, torn up with claw-tracks, lots of corset lacing and cut to show off all Andrea's tattoos. I got to use some gorgeous metallic purples and shimmers. It turned out really nice, and Andrea loved it, which is so super important to the success of a photo shoot in my experience.
After I finished painting, I watched the photo shoot for a bit then took off. I guess they went down to the Mint after I left and got a bunch of shots of Catwoman Leaving The Impressive Building With Her Jewel Heist. Fun stuff.
All in all I am pleased. I'm also quite excited to see them all blown up and printed and stuff. I don't think I've ever seen my work presented on that kind of scale.. I feel like I've leveled up.
More Photos Here! This one is my favorite:
The passion that comes from the creative process manifests itself so differently in different projects. Some projects I'm passionate and excited about from the get-go. Sometimes I'm sort of "meh" about a project until it's completely over with and I find magic in the pictures. Usually it's somewhere in between.
I'm up in Tahoe with some friends - we took a few days off and are spending them at the cabin, creating art. I'm here with a musician, a mad scientist (I kid you not, he is in the basement creating lightning - resulting pics here), and a beautiful red-haired model, Melissa.
I was planning on doing a snowy tree body painting and shooting photos outside by the lake, but.. it's been raining lately and the snow is wet, heavy, and messy.. and Melissa has bright red hair and gorgeous curves.. not quite right for a winter tree. Besides, I was trying to plan out the artwork and the ideas just weren't flowing. I couldn't quite "see" the finished project in my head and so I wasn't feeling really inspired.
This morning, watching our resident mad scientist scampering around, running high voltage wires throughout the house and hearing him cackle, my thoughts took another turn. The ozone in the air combined with Melissa's flaming red hair made me want to paint her like lighting, like smoke, like fire.. so that is what came out of my brush this morning.
There are so many factors to creativity. Sometimes, mistakes turn out to be the best part of a design. Sometimes lack of inspiration makes me push harder to create and sometimes it causes me to back off, or take another path. I think lately, the key is learning to relax and just let my brush paint what it wants to paint rather than over-planning or over-controlling each project.
And.. I love what resulted.. here are my two favorite pics. More up at Picasa!
Another fun painting I did at the convention.. there were so many fabulous balloon creations there, and Kara had been tapped to wear the Cinderella dress (which was just amazing!). The balloons comprised just the skirt of the dress and she needed someone to paint her bodice..
I'm going up to Tahoe next week and I want to paint a winter tree.. I've done a spring tree and a summer tree painting, and last time I was in tahoe the beauty of the snow inspired me to keep working on the series. Now I just need to find a model.. and figure out how to keep her from freezing out in the snow!!
One of the highlights of the FPBA convention for me was that I had a fire eating student fly down from New Jersey to Orlando to take a fire eating intensive class while I was on the East Coast. I do a lot of fire performance when I'm not body painting (fire.firepixie.com) and it was a lot of fun to be able to combine the two passions for an evening.
At the body painting convention last week I got painted by Brian Wolfe (eviltwinfx.com - web site coming soon) as an Ice Queen. As I think I've mentioned, I *love* getting painted.. that's really what got me into body painting in the first place. It was great fun - Brian's "evil twin" Nick painted another model as "fire" and the two of us had a great time shaking the whole place down.