I have always gotten a lot of my inspiration for music and imagery dealing with music. I am not the hugest fan of Die Antwoord but I have enjoyed their music over the years. Their energetic music comes in quite handy when you have seven haunted house makeups to do in less than 2 hours. Along with their music comes some pretty dark imagery. From Yolandi’s blacked out eyes, drastic hair styles, smeared makeup and blood. It’s all very bold but minimal at the same time, which is what I love.
There is an image of Yolandi in body paint that I was always drawn too. She is painted white with very simplistic designs drawn on her in black. I have wanted to do something similar for a while but wasn’t sure how to tackle it. First of all I didn’t want people to see those types of remedial designs and think that's all I was capable of. I would like to think I have done enough body paint over the years to put that thought to rest so I decided to move forward. Once I set myself to doing it then I needed to figure out what to paint. It’s no secret that I love Halloween and I thought that would be a good basis for the designs. I wanted to do simple things that could be achieved in a line drawing.
From there I needed a photographer. I wanted to work with someone I hadn’t worked with before. Jeff Lohne came to mind but I hadn’t seen him work in a while. I really liked his work though and wanted to see if he was interested. I knew this wasn’t really his style but he decided this would be a good way to show back up on the scene and I was happy he agreed. From there I had to find a model. I have worked with Jasmine (Jazz) Shank before and she was super easy to work with. I knew she would have the right playful personality for this too and luckily she said yes.
In Jazz’s words, “This was my second time working with Matt and my first time working with Jeff. I loved every second of the vibe as we just listened to music and basically hung out. I even created tiktok vids while Matt painted this masterpiece on my body. It was just a really fun and chill experience and I really loved working with both of them. I’d highly recommend both of them to anyone and can’t wait until our next collaboration.”
On the day of the shoot I styled Jazz in boots and striped athletic socks. I thought this would help give it the fun but edgy look we were going for. I knew like the inspiration I wanted to keep the pallet limited with the addition of a third color instead of just two. So with our Halloween pallet of black, white and orange we were ready,…almost. Jazz had bright blue hair which posed an issue with or three color pallet. While I liked the blue hair it really threw off the color scheme. I had a dark grey knit cap in my bag that we threw on her and it kind of worked for a spray paint tagger look.
I first painted her black with Mehron Paradise water activated body paint using the “Mark Reid” brushes that Mehron had sent me. I didn’t paint her feet or lower legs because I knew the socks would cover. I also didn’t paint her right hand for two reasons. I knew I was going to be painting it orange to make it look like she spray painted it. I also wanted to leave her with her right hand free until the end so she could continue to do her TikToks and use her phone as you can see above.
Painting the simplistic symbols was harder than I expected. I wanted to add detail to them but kept having to stop myself. Keeping them simple was a challenge for me. The white Mehron Edge body paint made it easy technically though because the formula lays nicely on top without mixing and turning gray or muddy. On Jazz’s face I used a heavy orange eye shadow and a black lip. I outlined the lip in white to resemble the line drawings on her body.
This team did an amazing job and I love how this makeup and body paint came out. For this not being Jeff’s style really and not having picked up his camera in a while I’d say he nailed it. Jazz as usual killed it with the posing and really showed off the work and kept it fun. There were so many good images to pick form. I really hope you all enjoy them because we had a good time making them.
Final Photos edited by Chelsea Marrin
