My lovely friend, Tyhara is pregnant with her first baby and a miracle baby at that! to celebrate, we did a photoshoot at my house. 3 looks with easy changes: Neutral, Colorful and Editorial graphic liner! I loved these looks and Dre Photography did an amazing job of capturing it <3
Hello hello! It’s been a bit! I’m a great documenter, working on the sharing part 😅 but I was invited to do hair for the lovely Lyra Barillas! She is an amazing actress, model, and cat mom. She wanted some new work for her portfolio and I happily agreed! Luckily we also got this work published in Lady Gunn Magazine. Check it out below for more images from the shoot!
Next we played with an updo version of this style. She has tons of lush hair but it’s heavy so lots of Bobby pins and small sections were needed. I did a partial French roll and added pin curls back in to cover it a bit and keep the texture.
Next were warrior style braids. It screams Jason Mamoa in Game of Thrones in the best way 😂 strong, powerful and practical for battle. I liked keeping the styles a bit tousled so I fluffed up the braids a bit instead of making it super sleek.
The last hair look is my absolute favorite because we get a little edge action! I wish I could have done more but we were cutting it close on time and energy but I’m so happy with how it turned out. We went for perfect pulled back ponytail with these not so baby hair accents and it wired to give her extra intensity on the eyes.
We started with some classic 50’s pin curls. This made things easy for multiple styles and eventually styling her into finger waves. Her hair is long so it’s not the full hair helmet that we traditionally know but I think the point came across.
It’s a new year and mannnnnn am I grateful to not only have made it through the past two years but to have thrived in so many ways. I also feel like I should reintroduce myself since many things have changed for me in the time I have been away from the blog.
Photo by SashaLee Photography
Let me lay down the basics: My name is Erica, I’m 24 soon to be a quarter century old. I make art in the city of Boston and my mission is to create a sense of awareness of self in people that they may have otherwise ignored or had gone unnoticed. From the makeup artistry to my illustrative work, I want people to see themselves in their best light but also shed light on the things that have been hidden.
With makeup, I do this by showing people it doesn’t take much to release your inner self. It’s all about the confidence gained by becoming the reflection of yourself that shows who you are on the inside, outside. Reminiscing on my chameleon days of “new wig everyday” and having 3 opposing aesthetics a week, helped me to find the little details of personal style that brought my inner personality to life. If you’ve ever had your makeup done by me, you’ll hear me say, “it should be you but more refined” but the thing is, I don’t want to define what the refinement is. That’s for you to be curious about and figure out what you are tuning yourself into. Often times, it’s just another aspect of you that lacks visibility.
Taking that into consideration, I never want to mask how I or anyone else feels or expresses themselves. I want to amplify. This goes for my illustration as well. I want to create a space that is tangible for people to feel like they can express things they never have before and explore what that is or what it could mean for them. I have had many highs and lows and dealing with them has revealed a lot about the ways in which I view the world and where those boundaries are or even where they are being created. Emotional and spatial awareness is a big part of my current work as I practice this while making the work itself.
Photo by Mona Miri
I will be working my way back to fashion posts and “style studies”. It’s clearly something I have always loved but it heavily ties into art and the way I like to tell stories. People around me have taught me how to tell better stories and that it can help to push a story forward. That’s why I love costume designers Ruth Carter and Ellen Mirojnick. They use color, texture and historical narratives that are more engaging stories. I want to do that in my daily wardrobe but I’m also working on creating a more sustainable wardrobe. I am back to designing and making clothes for myself again. But as always, my wardrobe is open to independent designers, black-owned, Women-owned and eco-friendly businesses. Moving forward as I want my closet to have a similar moral messaging that hold myself to. So I’m excited to go back to being dressy and cute and adding to my “Chameleon Effect”. I will also be partner with some new people and brands this year so don’t be surprised when I have discount codes for days for you!
Looking forward to more posts and educational resources on here as well as BTS and process work for all of my projects. See y’all later! 😊
I love this little snippet from The Real Daytime that has been illuminating to hear
Hello hello! How are y’all? I hope you are in good spirits! It’s been a while but i want to show you where i’ve been and what i’ve been up to these past few months!
I had the amazing opportunity to do makeup for a music video!! Side Presents, who I’ve worked with on a few other occasions last year, invited me to design and execute looks for ToriTori’s video project and I was beyond words. Tori and I chatted about the concept for the video and styling so we could come up with something that matched the mood and tone. After coming up with a plan, I sketched out a few ideas. Here’s the face chart I created to get a better sense of which direction would be best.
Making face charts with these descriptions really helps the person embodying them set the mood for themselves and how they would like to approach the look. I always think of the attitude that comes with a look and especially for something like this that comes with a bit of acting, I love to add it in. It’s part of stepping into that new reality or storyline. The story of this video definitely read a bit sexy but sinister so with each look there were all varying instances of drama. Red lips for me always read sexy but darkening it made it more vampy. We ended up going for the Classic Sultry look for the video which turned out perfect! take a look at the video and tell me Tori’s isn’t absolutely gorgeous, and if you do, yous a lier 😜
We banged out a music video in a weekend and what a weekend. Cast and crew were amazing! gotta give it us for TLoui and Marly for inviting me to be apart of this project, feeding us goos, hosting us in both of their homes for the video and for keeping us on track. We had 3 locations for this shoot including a dance studio hiding under a hair salon! not to mention the crew was almost am all black production 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 I love working with other black creatives in my city so it made me happy to make everyone look and feel good. Plus a pet talk from me will hopefully get you through anything or at least that’s my hope.
Cast |
Performing Artist: Toritori
Love interest: Junior
Dancers / Friends: Carmen, Patrice, Theralande, Marly
Production/Direction: HomeGrownHD | Christian & Rickey
Makeup Artist: Erica Imoisi
