Mark attended a lovely birthday party last weekend. Giving the birthday child her special princess balloon created wonderful smiles! A lovely message, including this picture, was left on his facebook page. Go check it out to see his latest creations and read his glowing reviews! #theballoonsmithuk

With a growing pile of custom shoes on my desk, my mind turns to idea of creating ‘print on demand’ designs… I like the idea of creating designs based around my bodyart… obviously that would mean my ordering lots of samples… so many shoes! 🤣

So, here we are, already at the end of January and interesting plans are afoot.

This weekend saw me trialling 10 minute airbrush make-up designs as part of the interview process for a very exciting creative post! I’ll tell you more after this round selection has completed… fingers crossed I make it to the final stage!!

In the mean time, here is one of make-ups…. a little ‘ageing’….

2018!!!!!

2018 has been a very busy year..

In March I was invited to teach at EFABE in Holland – a huge privilege and really fun experience! Teaching along side industry experts and meeting new creative friends made for a fantastic event!

In April I was invited back to The Gibraltar Bodypaint Festival, to judge their bodyart competition along side Pashur, an incredible artist and all round great guy. This proved to be an excellent experience. After this I was also asked back to represent the festival as a demo artist at the now established Gibraltar International Comic Con!

July saw me fly to Austria with friends (assistant) Venice Marshall MUA and (model) Stephanie Beal. We entered the Pro Airbrush category and placed a very respectable 5th!!!!

https://www.theprostheticsevent.co.uk/

In November of 2017 I had the pleasure of painting at Neill Gorton’s Prosthetics Event, in Birmingham. It’s a fantastic event full of creatives! I had the pleasure of painting in their BodyArt Zone, as I will be again this year! I can’t wait! My paint last year was planned very last minute and became a fanart piece based on the Netflix series #Stranger Things! I loved this paint! My awesome model was Stephanie Beal.

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The whole summer of 2017 was a blur of festivals, face-painting and glitter. I had so much fun painting at Latitude, wow, what a spectacle! It was great having adults squealing with delight over their glittering unicorn face paint!

Gibraltar’s first Comic Con!

So, after having had a fantastic time at the festival I was invited to go and paint as part of Gibraltar’s first ever comic convention! It was so much fun, thought the journey there was an adventure, again 😀 This time I flew to Malaga where the organizer, a lovely guy called Stan, was to collect me. Unfortunately there had been an accident on the road from Gib’ to Malaga so Stan was stuck in his car for hours and I was stuck at the airport (where it was a little chilly)! I think we finally arrived back at the hotel just outside the Gib’ border at about 2-3am! Phew, long trip!

The Saturday saw me drag my bones out of bed to a beautiful sunny day… not that the sun lasted very long 😀

The event was great fun! I got to paint Danielle (again) as Lady Deadpool and Daniella, as original Harley Quinn.

The 5th Annual Gibraltar Bodypaint Festival

Well! The was an exciting, eventful weekend. Myself and two great friends of mine, Jo Kawasaki and John Jones set off from Birmingham airport expecting to land in Gibraltar in just a few hours time… it didn’t quite go to plan. First our flight was delayed by an hour and then when trying to land, the wind changed!

After two very bumpy attempts to land we were diverted to Malaga Airport. This meant we had to catch a coach to Gibraltar (which was thankfully supplied by the airline – thanks Monarch). We arrived in Gibraltar around 11pm, tired, hungry but excited.

On the first day of the festival a group ofus  wandered down to the gorgeous venue and starting painting – just for fun 😀 It was so relaxed! – I painted my lovely friend, Jo as the Widowmaker from Overwatch.

On the Saturday I totally changed my plans for friend and model, Lee frost, rejecting the idea of painting him as a Guardian from Destiny and opting to go with something a little more complex and a lot more ‘him’ – Batman Beyond. This paint took around 10 hours! One of my longest yet! Lee was an absolute star and totally rocked the finished paint. In fact, after posing for photos he went off to the local McDonalds then to a bar and strutted his stuff into the small hours, still painted!

On the Sunday , I painted one of the festival leadership team, Danielle. It was her first full paint so a real baptism of fire, especially as she’d been partying with Lee the night before 😀 For her paint we recreated a character called Hell from the game, Smite. She’s a very strong character!

After finishing Danielle’s paint, Jo, myself and our good friend and fellow artist Tina Smith packed in a flash and dashed to get a taxi to the airport. Judging was still in progress as we left!

To my surprise, just as we were checking in a text came through to say…. I won both of the weekends awards!!! The judged paint (on Danielle) afforded me first place and the festival attendees blind voted me as The People’s Choice!!

Amazing!

Bodycraft Festival

This year saw the launch of the UK’s newest bodypaint festival – #Bodycraft: a fantastic event geared towards fun, friendship and face and bodyart tailored to suit all budgets.

I was kindly asked along by organisers Jo Banks and Helen Graham to demo a bodypaint and do an impromptu mini workshop. Whist there I got to see any of my friends painting in the competitions. Watching bodyart happen is almost as much fun as creating it… almost 🙂

I was given a very sweet ‘new’ model to paint – Tobias K Walker. he day prior he had been painted another great artist and friend, Liz Barnes.

The theme for the festival was ‘by the seaside’… so, my demo paint was all about ice-cream… but of course!!

Getting ready to jet off to the Gibraltar Bodypaint Festival 2017!

I’ve been Facebook friends with Hamish Domeldo, the festival organiser, for a little while now and had intended to go the festival last year (2016) but never made it. This year however, it’s full steam ahead!

I was really excited earlier this year when Hamish asked me if he could use one of my bodypaint images for the festival advertising, (a Skyrim inspired paint created with model Jo Kawasaki and photographer Tvkphotography).

After discussion it was decided that it would be more fun to create something new, so we both chose a game we like and designs were created from them. These were brought to life with some of my favourite people, models Jo Kawasaki and Lee frost and photographers Rob Gurney  (DigitalMechanic.com) and Stuart Richards. The creativity took place at both Rob’s studio in Leicester and Stuart Richards’ studio in Grimsby – the uv image was taken by the lovely Stuart Richards.

The image of Lee made it into a national and local newspaper thanks to Rob popping our gun prop on his windowsill 🙂 but that’s another story…

The Sci-Fi Weekender!

Being one of the leaders at the The Midlands Bodypaint Project can be very time consuming.  Chasing events, organising meets and classes can all feel a little overwhelming at times.

This past weekend saw us take to the road on a 360 mile round trip to Wales, to take part in the Sci-fi Weekender and boy was it worth the trip!

Our team was small but tight and an utter pleasure to be with, as always. Everyone painted their heart out and had many lovely chats with event goers. (We just love cosplayers!)

My bodypaint was H.R.Giger inspired. The baby Xenomorph being for my brother, who’s first baby was born just two days earlier.  (My new niece is utterly beautiful and nothing like a baby Xenomorph 😂.)

My fabulous model was, Carl Houghton.

Photography courtesy of Tina Smith,  SD Photography and my mobile 😁

Enjoy!