Hiya, my names Elena Manoli, I am a make-up artist from London, currently studying in Southampton. This is my first blog and I want to start putting my work out there for people to see and give me feedback, the name of this blog is Wild Kingdom and is my first project since ive started back at uni. I hope to inspire people and find people to inspire me. :)
This is Vogues March 2010 shoot, and perfect inspiration for my high fashion photo shoot. I absolutely fell in love with these images when I found them, I feel like they have mixed the tribal theme into high fashion perfectly. I love how plain they have kept the makeup on her face and focused mainly on the styling and body. The body art symbolises tribal shapes straight away, and I like the contrast with the high fashion styling and the 'jungle lie' background.
These are some practice shots of lion king inspired make up. I took some ideas from the lion king programme and incorporated them into my own ideas. I looked at the colours used on stage, they were mainly reds, blues and yellows. I used block colours because I didn't want them to blend, instead I wanted them to contrast with eachother and stand out. I was bored in my room, so I thought id roughly experiment a bit with my make up. Looking through the programmes, I gathered inspiration and decided on a look for my final shoot. I also tried to experiment with the lips by doing an ombre look on them. I used red on the outside and white/yellow on the inner lips.
As you can see, these are images that I have taken from my Lion king programmes. As soon as I watched the show, the hair, make up and costume has immediately inspired me, this is why I am so excited to create my final looks for Wild Kingdom. Whilst watching the show, I kept on thinking how they came up with such ideas, the hair and make-up looked flawless and you felt as if it wasn't people on stage, but actual animals. Ive tried some of the make-up out on myself, and its made me so motivated and driven to make my final outcome amazing. Ive tried to incorporate the inspiration from the lion king into my high fashion and avant-garde shoots. When the show begun, I immediately noticed the colours used. The colours were very warm, the main colours were reds, yellows and blues. I took this into account when practicing my look.
So its 5 in the morning, I couldn't sleep, whilst i was up watching youtube videos inspiration struck me and I'm so excited to write this post! A couple of days ago, a friend asked me to help with her photo shoot, she studies fashion styling and asked me to style her models hair into a Mohican. Whilst watching a movie, I was totally distracted and an idea popped into my head. I remembered that the hair I done for her shoot was very similar to a style that Cassie had in a photo shoot. I couldn't remember which specific shoot it was, but after researching things over and over on the internet it finally came up. The photo shoot was for CLAM magazine and there is also a video below of her behind the scenes. I thought this shoot was so underrated as she looks absolutely stunning in it. Everything about this photo shoot and video inspired me for my tribal shoot. The styling, hair and makeup all link and are similar to how I want my final look to be. I feel like her shaved head can also relate to African tribes as they go to extreme measures in order to identify their tribes.
This is just one image above of the hair I styled for my friends shoot, I'm happy she asked me as it was good practice for me and has given me so much inspiration. I feel like having a mohican on my model will give my shoot a bit of an edge, yet still look tribal and high fashion. To create the hair style I had to do a bit of research first, I started by watching youtube videos to help me, then realised it was easier than I thought. Im a big fan of styling hair and I always have been, I'm very excited to try this look out on my model. Although, one thing I would change is to make the mohican neater and use less hairspray in order for it to look natural.
As soon as I saw this shoot, I immediately thought of ideas for mine. Some ideas I've had are using jewellery in my models hair.
Jean-luc Moerman is an artist from Belgium. The three images above are all examples of his work. He takes contemporary images and applies tattoo art onto them. I tried out a few of my own on pictures in a magazine. Whilst sitting in my room, I thought id take my marker pen and doodle around on some images of celebrities and campaigns.
I have written a previous post showing some examples of tribal nails. After speaking with my lecturer she told me to try and experiment with different styles. My sister is a beautician and also specialises in nails so she gave me tips on how to create some tribal looking shapes onto the nails. I roughly played around with my nails the other night whilst blogging, I simply used a plain coloured base coat and carefully designed patterns on top using a thin permanent marker. Although its not very professional to be using a marker pen, my sister advised me that its the easiest and neatest way you can draw shapes onto the nails. Tribal patterns include a lot of triangles, circles and small dots so using a marker pen was the quickest thing to use. Especially if I am rushing on a shoot.
In my last practical session, we had to experiment with different hairstyles and materials for our tribal shoot. At first, I was going to create a look that I've created before using polystyrene balls on my models hair. After speaking to my lecturers, they told me to try something more daring and using some more materials on the hair. After rummaging through a box of materials, I found a hard circle cone I could use around the hair. When I first picked it up I instantly thought of Willow Smiths - Whip your hair video. Instead of making the circle head on and being seen from the side, I put the circle horizontally across my models face. To do this I first created a pin curl on the top of her head and hair gripped the circle to the surface as you can see in the right image.
As you can see, I have photographed the process of my work. My next step was to curl my models hair around the circle to hide it. I used a curler to curl the hair in order for it to go around easier and neater instead of forcing it. Once I had curled the hair i used a lot of grips and hairspray to make it hold. With the excess hair, At first I didn't know what to do with it, but after researching some tribal images I decided to plait it round to the front. Im happy I decided to take a risk, instead of being scared to try something new. I enjoyed the outcome, however if I could give myself one tip it would be to make the hair a lot neater and to use more product on the hair.
After doing some research on tribal jewlerry, I collected a few images on what I found. As you can see, most of their jewellery consists of bright block colours. Some tribes elongate their necks, by stacking up a lot of necklaces, their necks instantly look longer. I want to try out a few looks that involved me using a lot of jewellery around my models neck. Ive also noticed that the jewelley they wear is quite thick and chunky. Whilst researching on the jewellery, I was thinking on how I want to style it for my photoshoots, for my high fashion shoots, I was thinking to use gold jewellery with chunky shapes instead of block colours. I wanted to save the block colours so I can use it on my avant-garde shoot.
