Lists, preparation and argh, I’ve dyed my hand a funny colour!

Posted on Sep 30, 2010 09:17:17 PM

Two days to go! Well, one, since it’s pretty much the end of Thursday. Ack! One day to go!

Since the national body art competition is here again, I thought I’d relink to this list of things I wish I’d known about competitions that I wrote last year.

Also here is my checklist, feel free to use it for your very own… potentially without the fan, veil and train.

I now leave you to your previously scheduled programming, while I return to my mad prep.

Kara

PS. It’s orange, by the way, my hand.  I look like I’ve had a bad fake tan mishap. I bet this is what body-builder’s assistants look like after competitions.  It’s a little worrying. I’ve always used this brand of paint and it’s never been a problem to remove before.

…probably best not to mention it to my model.

Oh, speaking of orange, how cute is this little guy as the Mad Hatter? Awwwww!

I regret to say, I’m back…

Posted on Sep 27, 2010 05:29:11 PM

from Fiji.  Sigh.

Disclaimer 1: This post is entirely personal, there is nothing in it relating to body art, facepainting or any other of my interests, except for my interest in being warm and sunbaked on a tropical island.

Disclaimer 2: I have no idea why my son chose to  hide under his hat for this photo.

Malolo Lai Lai Island in September is hot and sunny and just nine kinds of awesome.  We ate, drank, swam, took boats out for gorgeous snorkelling and even took nighttime dips in the pool because it’s just that warm, even in “winter”.  Fijians think it’s cold in September, you know, a mere 30-32C.   My children, on the other hand, turned into amphibious creatures more at home in the water than on land.

We stayed at Musket Cove in a timeshare bure.  It’s beautiful.  Palm trees, white sand, lovely big bures (houses) with a super king bed, a single bed and a pull out sofa and best of all for a family with two fussy eaters, a  fully equipped kitchen.  Thank heaven for not having to eat in restaurants all the time.

It wasn’t entirely perfect, of course.  No holiday is.  Miss Pink on the left there came down with Chicken Pox the day we arrived. >.<  She had to stay away from all the other kids at the resort, which was a bit sad, and she didn’t have the energy she normally would, so we cancelled all plans for adventures of an ‘all-day’ kind and just hung around the resort doing the little expeditions. It was just as much fun.  Pamol and Ibuprofen and Calamine lotion kept her comfy and the three salt water pools kept her cool and waterlogged.   As you can see, we both got our hair braided too, after ascertaining that the ladies at the Spa had had chicken pox already.

Also, while “fiji-time” has improved to the point where boat trips leave pretty well on time, it is still painfully in force when it comes to food service at Musket Cove.  Do NOT wait until you are actually hungry to order a meal, you’ll expire before it arrives.  I’m not sure why it’s so bad there.  We theorized that it might be because they think you’ll order more drinks if your food takes ages to arrive.  If so, it’s a bad idea. Bad service doesn’t make me want to order more alcohol, it makes me want to eat elsewhere next time.

Small frustrations aside, we had a brilliant time and 7 days wasn’t any where near long enough. 

Now to get my head out of the cloudless skies and back onto prepping for the NZBAA which is this weekend!!! Eek! Wish me luck.

Post Chimera Post 1 – Friday night

Posted on Sep 5, 2010 12:31:10 AM

So.  Anyone who has read this blog for a year, or gone back and had a nosy through the archives, knows that one of the highlights of the year for a larper is Chimera, the annual NZ Roleplaying Convention.

It was last weekend. It’s taken me all week to recover. 48 hours. 25 larps to choose from. 6 costumes to assemble/make/beg/borrow/steal.  Makeup and prosthetics to mess around with. YAY!

So. Much. Fun.  In fact, I was so fortunate in my game picks and character allocations that I can’t even pick a favourite game. 

I ran around being an extremely dumb orc wizard on Friday night. “All orcs who are stealthy say ‘Aye’!”  All orcs shout AAAAAYE at the top of their lungs.  I made a dreadlocked and braided black wig and did my face and hands up all green, very simple. I wore black laceup pants and a patchwork leather vest (yes, made by me) and made a giant foam and latex shepherd’s crook.  I failed to cast a single spell or fight in any battles. We were very good at making noise and running away.

That’s me on the right hand end. I point it out since my husband took one look at that photo and said “Is that YOU?!?” Haha. Mission accomplished.

Since this is a facepainting site and not just my personal ramble space, I do try to focus on that aspect of my hobby here.  Here are two undead folk who I also helped out a bit with their makeup. 

Man it was muddy out there though. We all came back reasonably brown and soggy, whatever we’d looked like going out!

Post Chimera Post 2 – Saturday afternoon

Posted on Sep 4, 2010 12:52:20 AM

Don’t get me wrong, Saturday morning was great! I got to play a supervillainess in red leather knee boots and suchlike, but the only body art was the tribal spider tattoo on my arm, so I guess this isn’t the place for it… ah, who am I kidding.

See? There is body art… sort of…

All these photos of Chimera are taken by our ninja photographer, Judit Klein.  She’s amazing.  She probably gets sick of hearing “Wow, when did you take that photo? I didn’t even see you!”  Which is, of course, perfect for  a larp photographer.

Anyway, Saturday afternoon was more fun from a makeup perspective. I got to play with latex and gelatine for the first time.  I made the prosthetics before the game and colored them on my skin on the day.  The total break time for getting out of the previous costume, eating lunch and getting into this one was one hour, so it was a little rushed.  This is me as a mutant human.   I thought I’d mess with trying to make those pretty little diamantes look slightly disturbing, like they were growing out of my skin and eating it away.  I don’t think it really came out looking like that, but it looks… mutanty, so I call it a win.

Again, two great games and two fun characters to play.  No photos are available of Saturday night yet. It was a shotgun WildWest game, so imagine haybales, guns galore, cowboy hats, boots, jeans, red injuns, saloon girls. Yeehaw!

Arrrrrrh, zombie pirates ahoy! or… NZ Body Art Awards, Kara style

Posted on Aug 19, 2010 08:14:59 PM

I was asked to paint in the Media Launch for the NZ Body Art Awards this year.  Fun right? Yup.

I was a little nervous, couldn’t really think of what to do on the theme on short notice.  The theme this year is Incredible India.  Then the lovely Mem Bourke let me know that it didn’t have to be themed and I could do a pirate or horror or whatever I wanted.

I missed that last part because my brain combined horror and pirate and shorted out.  I mean, come on, ZOMBIE PIRATE!?! Eeeee! Pirates of the Carribean FTW!  Happy, happy, joy, joy.   So, I showed up at the Mayor’s Office with my painting kit, several belts, a headscarf and a large rusty scimitar.  Honestly, being a larper is so very handy sometimes. I met my model, a Maori fellow with long curly hair and no front teeth!  How perfect is this?   Well, ok, traditionally, pirates aren’t Maori, but they DO have long scruffy hair and bad teeth, right?

Once again, I sob and swear because I forgot my camera and had to take pics of my work on my phone. My phone is new and the camera on it sucks.  I should probably rename my website “The Pictureless Painter”.  Here are a few I managed to get, blurry and grainy as they are, they’re better than nuffin.

Lesson du jour: Staple camera to my forehead from now on. 

The Business of Art, or, How to get out of your own way!

Posted on Jun 25, 2010 11:23:52 AM

5 things you need to sell your art and 5 things you DO NOT need to sell your art.  Probably something every artist in the world needs to read!  I wish I’d written it.

http://lateralaction.com/articles/sell-your-art/

The Face and Body Art International Convention is over – I’m not jealous

Posted on Jun 10, 2010 06:31:13 PM

much…

In truth I’m highly amused.  The hotel that hosted the FABAIC this year charged an extra cleaning fee to the organisers.  Now with many conventions, it might have been for drunk and disorderly behaviour, vandalism and furniture wreckage, but not us. Not body artists.   We (can I be inclusive even though I didn’t get to go?) got a “Glitter Cleanup Fee.”  lol.  Apparently there was glitter EVERYWHERE. 

This makes me really happy for some reason.  Artists are good people. 

While I’m nattering on about it, Yolanda from BodyFx won the competition at the Fabaic. Yay!  Congrats!

Goodness, they’ve got registration for next year up already!  Guess I’d best start stalking the airline specials.

Dramatic Reading of a Breakup Letter

Posted on Jun 5, 2010 12:55:11 AM

I have no idea why this is out there on the interwebs… except to make my sides hurt on an otherwise boring night when I’ve eaten way too much sugar.  So, instead of doing anything artistic, I shall share the funny. 

http://youmakemetouchyourhandsforstupidreasons.ytmnd.com/

A is for Alice on Anzac Day

Posted on Apr 25, 2010 07:59:19 PM

I thought I’d do an “A” based facepaint. Potentially with a view to doing the rest of the letters of the alphabet too. Now, it’s Anzac Day today, so it occurred to me that I should probably do an Anzac Day facepaint, maybe with poppies or soldiers or some such thing.
Unfortunately, that only occurred to me this morning,so I’m going to be an unpatriotic wench and do Alice in Wonderland instead.  It took me a while but I finally came up with a design I liked  which is definitely “Alice in Wonderland” and also fits reasonably well on a face.

I took photos from different angles and it actually scared me a bit because the smile follows you…

Happy Anzac Day everyone.

Mehndi, facepaint style

Posted on Apr 20, 2010 01:42:00 PM

I love learning new skills, so I was pretty excited when I got an email from a lovely lady organising a Bollywood party for her daughter. She wanted temporary Mehndi designs for the young guests.

I have seen mehndi before and been fascinated by the intricacy of the designs, but I never thought to try it in paint.  It turns out that it takes quite a while to produce those whole hands / arms /feet that they do for brides.  However, we came up with a few simplified ideas that we could apply to the party guests in the standard five minutes.  It was a hit!  I think I may add “Pretendi Mehndi” to my repetoire!