Silver Body Paint Photoshoot

So this was something completely new for me! I had never worked with body paint before, but trying something new always feeds my excitement and creativity.
My model was my dear friend and Bulesque performer Rebel Neff. So we were both totally comfortable with me having to paint her entire body head to toe! Strangely I found the weirdest body part I had to paint was the ears! Having to really work the paint into every crevice 😂

We used Merhon metallic powder. A little went a very long way! So it’s definitely worth every penny! Mixed with Mehron Cosmetic Mixing Liquid, the result was like liquid silver. Hair was slicked back with gel and pinned into a little chignon. We used glitter in silvers, whites and pearlescent colours to blend the silver into the hairline, and layer over the brows and eyelashes. With a black fine glitter on the lips.

In hindsight we could have used a second coat of body paint, as upon closer inspection when editing the images, some areas revealed a hint of skin tone beneath. Easily touched up in post processing using Photoshop CS6 though. I used a soft feathered brush, sampled a colour from the silver areas to use, and selected a colour brush tool on around 50% opacity to work over any visible skin tones.

Metallic paint and the low lighting I chose to use in order to create the right atmosphere, are not particularly forgiving on any blemishes in the skin, so the healing patch tool was my best friend here. We wanted a smooth metallic look, but still wanted it to be real, to be able to see some texture and pores.

The addition of my smoke machine and couple of snoots fitted to my strobes to light up the smoke, we managed to capture something quite beautiful in this full body shot.

Images captured using my Nikon D5300, 35mm lens. Pixapro strobes, fitted with beauty dish and snoot light modifiers.