Mandarin Duck Challenge

As a way to help bring our artistic community together fellow makeup artist Bethany Hood decided to have a challenge. There were no winners and no losers.  This was just be a great way for people to show off their talent and creativity.  Bethany had an outside source pick an image that we would all have to use as inspiration and design our looks around.

The image that was picked was of a Mandarin Duck. They look like you gave a coloring book of ducks and a 64 color box of crayons to a kid and said go to town. The colors are so vivid and beautiful and blocked off. I had no idea what I was going to do. All I could see was the duck. I didn’t want to do feathers or anything birdlike, that much I knew. I struggled with it for a few days. I went back to look at the image of the duck and squinted my eyes really hard to try and take the bird out of the equation.

That seemed to do the trick. I decided to do a very abstract piece using as many different brush strokes and colors as were on the duck. Since I have never liked makeup on myself and the only camera I own is my phone I enlisted the help of some friends. I messaged my friend and great photographer Danny Alexander who I knew would capture the makeup the way I wanted. I then messaged my friend and Model Kaylynn Nyree. I felt her face would be beautiful for this look. While doing the makeup I would step back from time to time to make sure the color balance was right. The main thing I took from the duck was the white around the eyes. I thought that would make for a cool aesthetic. Since it was a makeup challenge the only editing I wanted Danny to do was making the sclera of her eyes black.  I was incredibly happy with how it came out.

Seeing all the makeups from all of the other artists was so cool. Everyone did such an amazing job. It was very interesting to see everyone’s interpretation of the same image. I cannot thank Bethany enough for doing something like this. It was such a cool way to bring a community together while fostering creativity.

Uploaded by Matt Goodlett on 2017-06-16.

Danny Alexander: http://www.dannypa.com/

https://www.crownbrush.com/

https://www.wonderbandsystems.com/

Contentment in Captivity

During Antonio's first photography workshop it was already a thought that we may do them quarterly. After the success of that class it cemented that idea. The first class was a "not so basic" lighting and editing class. We wanted to do something different for the next class, something with a little bit of a "wow" factor.

The idea was to do the hair and makeup, shoot the images, pick the images and then edit them together. That's right, edit them together because the next class would be how to create a composite image. Quite a large scale project to do in a class only three hours in length. We knew we had two models and a mannequin dress form. Antonio knew he wanted one of the models head's on the dress form.

Knowing that it would be silly to just throw a head on the mannequin with no story, we decided to meet over tacos and brainstorm.  The first idea was more for an 80's look. I was excited about doing that makeup and thought it could look really cool. However, the more we talked about it the more it didn't make sense with two models and the composite. In a moment of grasping at straws, I, having worked at a haunted house, blurted out "We could just have one model sewing the other model's head on to the mannequin's torso."

With that, Antonio's eyes lit up. HIs mind is just as twisted as mine and he suggested adding a pigs heart attached with wires to a car battery and the macabre list went on. Needles to say, we scaled back a bit. This completely changed the makeup look that would be needed for the workshop. Joey piped in to say "And Matt can do the severed head makeup." When I rattled off the idea that wasn't something that even crossed my mind. Now I would be doing not one, but two, beauty makeups and a severed head. Oh, and to prove that I am a glutton for punishment, I then suggested adding an eye patch and scar on the model that would be doing the sewing. Managing the makeup and spfx staff for the Devil's Attic haunted house for two years definitely helped in my ability for that amount of makeup application to be completed in such a short amount of time. 

We could have stuck with the 80's makeup but we took a different a route that just seemed to make more sense. We wanted it to have a Frankenstein/Addams Family/Nightmare Before Christmas kinda of feel. Our hair stylist, Michelle, said she was going to make a bride of Frankenstein inspired wig for Katya (our head model). We then brought in Francis Lewis to make a dress for our other model, Alexis, in the style of Wednesday Addams. Knowing we couldn't go with a stock eye patch, I embellished one with hot glue, cut up plastic plates, a plastic skull and black spray paint.

The class went off without a hitch. We had such an amazing team from top to bottom. it was amazing to see it all come together and to work seamlessly in such a short amount of time. Three hours is not a lot of time to accomplish something of this scale. Normally that's how long the hair and makeup alone would have taken for something of this caliber I am super proud of what we accomplished and created, I can't wait for the next one!

Photo: Antonio Pantoja, Antonio Pantoja - Photography and Cinematography
Makeup/SFX: Matt Goodlett, Matt Goodlett, MUA
Hair: Michelle Villareal
Stylist: Frances Lewis
Model: Katya Estes
Model: Alexis Gibson
Hand model: Rachel White
Lighting: Joey Goldsmith
Behind The Scenes: Gary Barragan, Gary Barragan Photography
Behind The Scenes: Misha Kidwell
Assistant: Justin Sinkler

Special thank you to my sponsors:

Tyler green with Wonderband Systems https://www.wonderbandsystems.com/ - The Wonderband made makeup application so much more efficient. Plus it just looks cool.

Crown Brush https://www.crownbrush.com/ - I can't say enough about this amazing company. They are awesome and their brushes are all I will use now.

European Body Art http://www.europeanbodyart.com/ - By far my favorite makeup for body paint and special effects. Such an amazing product.

Moo. https://www.moo.com/us/ -The only business cards I will carry. The quality is amazing as is the customer service.

Lenore

Photographer and documentarian Kory Easterman asked me a while ago if I would be a part of his body paint documentary. He is making the documentary to showcase talent in our region (Kentucky/Indiana/Ohio). Most of the body painting I have done outside of competition has been more of the abstract avant-garde type. Being part of a body paint documentary I knew that style wouldn't fly.  While I like how beautiful it can be in it's simplicity, more is usually expected of body painters.

I never declined but only having done more traditional body paints in competition with guidelines I had no idea what to do given free reign. I was scrolling through Instagram and came across a body paint of a skeleton in a tuxedo dancing with a beautiful woman by an artist named Georgina Ryland (@gearginaryland). It was so dark, beautiful and haunting. The way it was painted made me think of Edgar Allan Poe and my love of Ravens.

With that my mind was racing. I started sketching a few ideas. The first of which had the arms covered in pages from a book and the whole abdomen was a gradient graveyard. I sat on that for a while and began chatting with my friend Amanda Danielson with Velvet Rose Vintage who was going to make the head piece. She smartly suggested feathers on the abdomen. To me that was perfect. It was like the wings of the raven which represents death, embracing the grave of Lenore. The weakest point to me though was the arms. 

With the wings of the Raven/Death engulfing Lenore I found it fitting that the Model's arms represent a graveyard. After I got it all sketched out I was becoming more and more excited. I had found the perfect model to be my Lenore. Only problem was where to do it. I knew my studio at the Devil's Attic (www.thedevilsattic.com) would be a nice setup and fitting for the macabre. Plus, it just feels like home for me but it has no heater. In early march the weather was a nice and crisp but the basement of a haunted house retained the cold. 

I placed space heaters everywhere around my model (one can be seen in the above photo). Our haunt owner Jason, bundled up in his winter coat and knit cap who was there working on a new room even brought us down a propane heater. It looked like a jet engine blowing a blue flame. I had a little glass container of water placed of top of a space heater to use in activating my water activated cake makeups. It was so cold that steam would come off of my brush after dipping it in the hot water. I gotta say, our model was quite the trooper all through out.

I knew if I was going to put this much time, effort and love into something as well as our model's time an Amanda's amazing head piece I wanted and equally awesome picture. Kory would be getting some great footage for his documentary but I wanted a photo. I asked my good friend and amazing photographer Danny Alexander to come photographer it for me. 

Lucky for me he said yes and we have this amazing image above to show for it. My girlfriend Tia came along to hang out and watch. As it turned out she was needed. Tia stood in for lighting while I was painting and did a ton of other stuff to help out. I can look at this piece and see areas for improvement on my part. With that said I am very happy with what we were able to pull off. After doing this I actually want to do more body paints and not just for competition sake.

Photographer: Danny Alexander http://www.dannypa.com/

Model: RB

Head Piece: Amanda Danielson https://www.facebook.com/Velvet-Rose-Vintage-281424868648765/

Assistant and BTS: Shatia Rogers

I would also like to thank my sponsors at Crown Brush www.crownbrush.com and Wonderband Systems www.wonderbandsystems.com