Mystique Costume Evolution

With Halloween being one of my favorite holidays of the year I opted for a challenging costume. Who better than Mystique from X-men? Afterall, she's creepy, hot, and an absolute badass.

Finally settling on a combination of Byran Singer's X-men film version and one of the comic book versions, I immediately began gathering the necessary pieces of my costume together by mid-September. I even commissioned a friend to sew the top for me!

For the various pieces I ordered the contacts from Clearly Contacts, while the rest of the make up, I purchased at the local costume shop. The scales pieces themselves were hand cut from dry blue acrylic paint and liquid latex. The piece itself took well over three hours to put together but well worth the effort.

 To see the results and a makeup tutorial, see below.

Mystique Costume Evolution!!

Make up list of must have and approximate timing.

A party of characters.

(Order of left to right)
Goth, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Mystique, Lucha Libre, Lady de Renaissance, and Clark Kent
Photo taken by Ira Malinich, the official photographer at the party my friends and I attended.
I'm assuming he was an official photographer anyway... he had big camera.

A Wolverine and a Mystique.

I searched high and low for a video that explained how to go about doing the make up. In my humble option this video was the best.

Don Quixote and His Giants

A commission piece for my friend, Catherine, who thoroughly enjoys reading.

The idea for this piece came up during a furious brainstorm several days after she commissioned me to do a piece for her. Without a strict sense of direction I stormed for any theme/idea that would be within Catherine's realm of interest. For some bizarre reason I finally landed on Don Quixote, a book I've never actually read but was kind of acquainted with thanks to an episode of a show called Wishbone.

For those of you who are curious Wishbone was a TV series broadcasted in the mid 1990's about a Jack Russell Terrier who iterates classic literature while imagining himself as the protagonist in each tale he tells. Educational plus you get to see a Jack Russell Terrier dressed up in cute little outfits, although I doubt the dog enjoyed it that much.

Moving on, the theme of this piece is about imagination, which is illustrated through Don Quixote's battle with the giants. In the book the "giants" are actually windmills. Many artist like to to paint the scene with Don Quixote fighting real windmills, however I thought it would be an interesting approach to paint what he seeing so vividly in his mind. Four attempts and two years later, here is the result.

Unfortunately I don't have access to a scanner, so this was the best available option.
The camera just doesn't do the piece any justice.

A caption within the piece if you will. An excerpt taken out of the book.

What I imagine Don Quixote's face to be like.

Don Quixote's Giants. Clues about what they actually are can be seen on their legs,
the ring leader's axes and on various articles of clothing.

Pieces inspired by trees

Connectivity

A piece created for myself rather than an assignment. The main theme revolves around our human bodies and how on a cellular level it's functionality and appearance is similar to that of trees. The idea came about when I was just coming home from the gym one day, my mind focused on muscles and nerves working away to allow us to move, when my eyes landed on the branches of a couple of trees.

Created with acrylic paint and oil pastels.

An interpretation of a last name

One of many assignments in drawing class. The primary purpose of this assignment was to give an interpretation of your specific last name without actually spelling it out. Students were expected to place a lot of thought in which mediums they were going to use and were encouraged to go with their second or third idea rather than their initial idea.

The piece was created on watercolor paper and made with ink,
bits of printed on paper and conte.