THE ORIGINAL BLONDE BOMBSHELL

model, Sierra Missed, photographer, Ryder Gledhill

What happens when you reschedule a body paint shoot five times, and the model drives 20 miles in the opposite direction of the photo studio? Magic. Sierra drove her last drops of gas going East on 44, instead of West, and almost drove into the Pacific. I went out to find her at the ocean, and threw $20 in her tank, giddy with excitement about the prospect of painting this highly sought after, and fun to work with model. She rocked it out for me at Nude Nite 2013, and it had been months talking about doing something with her. Originally, I wanted to paint her as Bonnie, from Bonnie and Clyde, and even had a pearl handled pistol lined up as a prop, but she INSISTED that Marilyn would be the better choice. I like to make everybody happy, so we browsed some photos, and initially, I thought, OK, this could be a really boring body paint job... but, She already kind of looked like Marilyn, with her bleach blonde cropped cut, and her legs for miles. I wasn't sure I could pull it off, but I did do my best. I worked off of a few iconic images of Marilyn, in her gold dress, and it WAS a very boring paint job. It was as traditional as painting clothing on the model. But then, I took my Wolfe White makeup, and started to outline where different shadows would drop, according to the photo, as Sierra looked confused and Ryder and I both wondered if this was the time to be experimenting on the model. I continued laying down graphic shapes, to block in with highlights and darks on the areas which would normally be flesh toned skin. The goal was NOW different, and I painted her to look exactly like the famous iconic photo of the model-actress, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I enhanced her lips, WAY outside her natural lip line, painting on the shine, producing a totally different brow arch up the sides of the nose, placement and shape, and nailing the shadow placement to translate for flat photo lighing. Note the large plum shadow on her chin that goes on her neck. It feels so good to do something daring!

You can see from this collage, how her skin is painted. You can see her natural lip line on the top row, with just red lipstick. It was a concern of mine, to paint the lips to Marilyn's identical shape, because red is not so forgiving, after I painstakingly painted her whole face in milky white tones. Wiping a red stain away would NOT have been fun. Luckily, Sierra was statue still for the lips, which to me, is the most difficult area to paint. Can you tell that the model is covered from her forehead all the way down to her hips, in paint?! That is the beauty of the illusion I like to play with when doing fine art body painting. Her chest is painted bright opaque white, and her cheeks are painted with a deep brown purple makeup, in a graphic way, to make the image perfect to the iconic photo. I even painted a little brown shadow on the underside of her nose, that drops onto her cheek, which looks bizarre when the light source isn't hitting her perfectly. I really had to team up and see eye to eye with the photographer, Ryder Gledhill, who ALWAYS knows how to light things, and always does his best work, on each piece, just like myself!

I even brought some foil paper, and some shreds of gold material to body glue on the sides of her painted dress to bring more illusion to the piece. The professional product for body glue that I use is called Pros Aide. It is what FX artists use to glue prosthetic pieces on to skin, in monster movies. Then there's this Marilyn.

As an artist, I tend to admire other painters and artists and strive to pay homage to them in a lot of my body painting, honoring the way that art history meets body painting, in more than just an "ancient tribal warrior painting" kind of way. Thanks again to Ryder Gledhill Photography, and Sierra Missed for such great faces to have fun with! Sierra affectionately refers to these model shots as "Horrible Drag Queen Marilyn."

So tell me, Norma Jean... is it true what they say about gentlemen preferring blondes?