My personal blog as a 'grown-up' Goth and Romantic living in the Highlands of Scotland. I write about the places I go, the things I see and my thoughts on life as a Goth and the subculture, and things in the broader realm of the Gothic and darkly Romantic. Sometimes I write about music I like and sometimes I review things. This blog often includes architectural photography, graveyards and other images from the darker side of life.

Goth is not just about imitating each other, it is a creative movement and subculture that grew out of post-punk and is based on seeing beauty in the dark places of the world, the expression of that in Goth rock. It looks back to the various ways throughout history in which people have confronted and explored the macabre, the dark and the taboo, and as such I'm going to post about more than the just the standards of the subculture (Siouxsie, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, et al) and look at things by people who might not consider themselves anything to do with the subculture, but have eyes for the dark places. The Gothic should not be limited by what is already within it; inspiration comes from all places, the key is to look with open eyes, listen carefully and think with an open mind..

Sunday 15 March 2015

Mermaid Make-Up

Today I experimented with colourful make-up. 
A very short post today!

I'm usually the sort of person that opts for very monochrome eye-makeup, but today I tried doing some make-up to match the colours in my hair. My hair is currently a darker gradient than before, with Directions Apple Green at the top, Stargazer Turquoise in the middle, and Directions Alpine Green for the back and bottom of my hair.

Not the best selfies. Photos by HouseCAT

For extra vibrant eyeshadow colours, I mask off under my eyes with bandage/dressing tape (being careful not to press too hard, otherwise it sticks fast and hurts a lot to pull off!) and then masking from the outer corners of my eyes to the outer ends of my eyebrows. I then cover the whole eyelid area right up to my brows in white foundation. The white foundation gives the eyeshadow something to stick to in order to last longer, and acts as a white ground to enhance vibrancy (something I learnt from Pre-Raphaelite painting techniques!). The masking using bandage/dressing tape also creates very clean, crisps edges. Really be careful not to stick it down too hard though, otherwise it really does tug at your skin to remove it (and as I have particularly stretchy skin, this is not fun!).

The finished effect reminded me of mermaids and ocean colours. Traditionally, mermaids are not always nice creatures, at least not in British mythology, where they're often a bad omen, or want to drown sailors - a bit like sirens - and are often associated with the weather turning nasty (this is Britain; the weather does that a lot, so perhaps we are overrun with mermaids? :P ). In Scottish mythology, there's a mermaid that's woman for the top section, and salmon for the bottom section, called a Ceasg or 
Maighdean Mhara that is a bit more benevolent, and she will grant three wishes to whomever catches her.

The photographs were taken on my webcam, and are not the best quality and are a bit hazy. They were also really quite dark despite it being a bright day, so I had to artificially lighten them in PicMonkey, so apologise if I look a bit paler than normal and a bit digital. The resolution wasn't good to begin with, and using tools that aren't meant as dodge and burn for those purposes in PicMonkey sort of smudged me further. 

6 comments:

  1. yay, someone to join me in the webcam/phone pic club! :-) would love to see more pics of your awesome hair though O_O

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    1. Your luck is in! I've just posted about my green hair :)

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  2. I think your hair looks fabulous. You always manage to be very creative with your colors and style.

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  3. You look GREAT! Beautiful! thanks for the inspiration, I am going to try this! Greatings from an also grown-up austro-french medieval Goth... Bye, Mirjam.

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    1. When you have a go at this, I would love to see the results - feel free to share a pic on the Domesticated Goth Facebook page, or send me an e-mail if you don't want to be as public :)

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