I decided to do vlogs instead of blog updates. Partly because I love watching vlogs and YouTube myself, and partly because I wanted to experiment with makeup on myself as I have been doing it for years on others. This is the first time I am turning the camera onto myself since the very early days when I had no choice but to experiment on myself to practise.
I started doing vlogs as I am crowdfunding a book that I wrote 6 years ago called Heart of Glass with my publisher, Unbound, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Check out the silent movie update here, which is at Week 3 of the campaign. It is a unique story. It is a stylish literary thriller set in 1980s Chicago and Macau. There is nothing like it on the internet or in the market. It is cross-genre and features themes of music and crime noir in an international setting, with an Asian female protagonist. It is an underdog story, addressing issues of life as an immigrant in a big city, whose constant desire for success is often squashed by repeated failure. I am promoting cultural diversity and post-colonial writing. Please check out the link here and please support me! I am after all from an ethnic minority that is under-represented in fiction, a non-English person writing in English. I am not only writing in my second language, I am writing about immigrants.
You cannot see the colour on the lids for doing a flapper look. I forgot to take a shot with eyes shut. But it is an easy technique. There are no tricks or anything special. Film makeup is like that. You’ve just really got to get the pigment on. And quick. No wishy washy colours. Go for bold tones. Deep contouring. Shape shifting. I did the whole look, hair and makeup in 35 minutes. I have applied red eyeshadow for the medium shade and a NARS glittery black for the dark shade. I changed the shape of the eyebrows completely, I straightened the brow so that there is no arch and there is a shortness to it. You can see that the brow ends before the eye ends. The short brow lifts the ageing face like mine. Actually that is the most important aspect. Once you change the brow shape, you can do anything with the rest of the look. The lipstick is No 1 Rimmel by Kate Moss.
I curled only the hair on top, sides and front of my head using a 20mm barrel tong, because the front view is the only view visible for my silent movie. I simply pinned it. The back was tied up in a ponytail and pinned to give the illusion of short hair.
Shortly in another update further down the campaign, I will certainly try the 1980s look as that is when the novel is set! I cannot wait to do a frizzy big hair permed effect! This is certainly quite a challenge!
