Um, this is bad-ass.
Archive | September, 2013
back to the beginning
27 Sep
The reason I have opened today’s post with an old photo of Bon Scott smiling through the agony of a badly infected testicle that you can practically hear straining against the seam of those skin-tight grey jeans is…. sorry, I’ve completely lost my train of thought.
well hello
Oh yeah. Something to do with an idea I had for one of my wig assessments. Any man out there willing to let me apply mascara to his chest hair to achieve the look? Get in touch via my contact page. I’ll make you look cool, promise.
This being-in-a-new-city-and-not-knowing-many-locals-well-enough-to-ask-if-they’ll-let-me-paint-their-bare-bodies situation is going to quickly become a problem for me at college. All I ever had to do in Oban was pull a ‘having a creative idea’ face and BAM, everyone’s volunteering to get naked, painted and photographed. Where are you, Glasgow exhibitionists?
Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for. Remember what happened when I put an ad on Gumtree looking for a flat-share? Yeah.
Anyhoo. Here are some other rock-god chests I wouldn’t mind painting, since I’m feeling particularly self indulgent today.
Reckless Love, who I shall be seeing next Thursday with Carissa – we are returning to the scene of last year’s crime…
Jettblack. When you google images of them, two pictures of me come up, which pleases me immensely. Lick lick.
Alright, that’s enough of that. We’ve got a lot to cover today.
Autumn’s here. Next week it will be October. I’m a little shit-scared of how fast time is galloping by.
I feel both settled and still very new in Glasgow. The very first time I arrived here in March 2008, I had a budget of £15 per day – £2 for food (Subway 6-inch of the day), £13 for my hostel bed which included breakfast, and dinner was a row of chocolate from the enormous stockpile I had bought in Belgium.
There is something about having absolutely no money that is kind of liberating. I mean, it fucking sucks, but it simplifies things. I walked and walked and walked around, day and night. I ‘saved’ all the free museums and art galleries for shit-weather days, and just walked the rest of the time. I would sleep in until right before free breakfast ended, so I wouldn’t be awake for too long burning calories and getting hungry. Late at night I would sit in my bunk writing, watching the others in my 14-bed dorm, wishing I was travelling with a big group of friends like they all seemed to be, wishing I knew where to go and what to do.
Everyone I spoke to raved about Edinburgh. Nobody seemed to think that Glasgow was up to much. I didn’t necessarily agree but after nearly 2 weeks walking and walking and walking around, I thought I could probably justify forking out for a bus to Edinburgh to see what all the fuss was about. There began a chain of events that lead me to running the backpackers’ hostel in Oban for 5 years, but that’s another story for another time.
What I didn’t immediately realise was that I’d developed quite a good relationship with Glasgow in this formative period of my early backpacking days. I didn’t have a head full of shit about how dangerous Glasgow was, so it didn’t occur to me to feel unsafe cruising the mean streets on my own in the middle of the night. I think I have always been reasonably sensible so I wasn’t going anywhere actually dodgy at night, but in retrospect I think the whole experience would have been different, and ruined, if I had been scared.
Instead, I felt Glasgow’s friendliness, I felt like it was a good place to be if you weren’t from here. People heard my accent and were interested. I was a young woman travelling alone so people went out of their way to make sure I was ok. I got invited into people’s homes for cups of tea and to look in their old family photo albums. They wrote down their addresses so I could send them postcards from wherever I went next. No one stabbed me, and I was never even offered heroin.
Glasgow is my Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Glasgow is my hooker with a heart of gold, my rough diamond. Glasgow’s reputation might not be the best, but you have to cop a feel for yourself, make your own mind up.
And do you think I can get the effing gif of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere in The Diamond Necklace Scene to work? Gah!
Anyway, here I am again, back where I first started my Scottish adventure five and a half years ago. My budget is about the same again, but the new job I start tomorrow will hopefully have LOTS of overtime and put an end to all this being-broke bullshit. It’s really cramping my style.
Are you still reading? Good for you. This week at college!
Kim Kardashian-style kontouring!
Saoirse kontoured to within an inch of her life
and just to think, most people try to get their makeup to match their skin tone and NOT leave a streaky brown tide mark around their jaw.
Wig work!
Ashleigh rocking the 90s-kids-TV-presenter look
She would have been the coolest girl at my high school in 1998
not pubes, just another wig sitting in front of the mirror
… and posing, bitches.
So here’s AC/DC with their 1980 hit, You Shook Me All Night Long, because it’s Friday. I know this flog has attracted the attention of many classic rock puritans internationally who are going to light up the whole internet with bitter posts about how you can’t have a photo of Bon Scott’s crotch one minute, and be signing off with a Brian Johnson hit the next, but all I can say is bite me. Also, AC/DC are Australian*. Ha!
Happy Friday, lovers Xx
*No one in Scotland likes hearing this truth.
the results are in
18 SepI strongly dislike airbrushing. It’s frustrating. The guns we use at college aren’t the best, and it’s impossible to clean them properly. That, and our class is 20-odd chicas, so we all have to share. Everything. All the time. There’s one of each thing we need, and 20 people wanting to use it at the same time. Gah!
I just… don’t like sharing.
And as previously mentioned, the makeup itself is minging. It has turned my skin to that of a 14 year old boy, yet when it’s on my face, sinking into my pores and wrinkles and looking like a thick hideous mask, that ugly crap somehow manages to make me look 100 years old. Bah!
Anyway, that’s today’s makeup bitch. Airbrushing will come in handy when it’s body-paintin’ time…
stencilicious
…I just don’t like it on my face. And college is awesome, in fact, and we only have to do airbrushing for another couple of weeks before we move on to other stuff.
ermagherd
And even though there are more people than required materials in the class, mostly everyone’s mostly cool. The tutors are all great, and it’s nice to sit in a classroom without wishing your time away.
I pay so much attention.
So this week, apart from hating on airbrush guns, we’ve been doing normal basic makeup/foundation…
makeup is gross
….and we also continued with studio portraits for our portfolio production. Here are some behind the scenes shots for your enjoyment:
my view
- their view
then we got fancy AND schmancy with the lighting
snap.
So that’s what’s going oooon, dear reader. Tomorrow, computer class in the a.m. and WIG-WORK in the afternoon! Couldn’t you just die?
Here’s Def Leppard with their 1983 (a very good year) single, Photograph. From Pyromania, back when Rick had both arms. It’s not my favourite DL song, but it’s not my least favourite either – and it’s topical, so bloody well listen to it, alright? 😉
x Imo
is this real life?
12 Sep
also, how BUFF is my arm? That’s my left arm, too.
Here I am at college, looking pensively out the window, wishing they’d fucking give us some notice for the days we’re having our photo taken so I’d know to spend a bit of time on my hair and makeup.
I’m also reflecting on poor old Miley Cyrus’s makeup in her latest music video – is it MEANT to look terrible? As if it was hastily applied by someone who had never used liquid liner before? As if the makeup artist had none of her kit with her that day, and so had to borrow stuff from someone who doesn’t really have any makeup, except for this old mascara sample and lip crayon that came free with a magazine 8 years ago and has been sitting untouched in a desk drawer ever since?
If so, job done, but it still bothers me. More than her bare arse on that demolition ball. You don’t want dust there.
Anyway, enough about Miley, this is imogenmaxwell.com after all.
3 weeks into my course and I can still scarcely believe that Googling pictures of David Bowie and making scrapbooks of makeup pictures is now, officially, what I do. No longer a slightly eccentric indulgence furtively carried out behind closed doors. A legitimate passtime. Positively reinforced by tutors who recognise my ability to Google pictures of David Bowie with unbroken focus for hours on end as sure signs of passion and commitment.
I am in actual heaven.
Anyway. What did I do apart from go Bowie-gif-crazy this week, you ask? Why, more airbrushing, of course. I only just realised that the eyeshadow, below, I did on Sinead is a little bit inspired by David’s, above. Interesting. STOP TALKING ABOUT DAVID BOWIE IMOGEN, NO ONE ELSE CARES.
my patient model Sinead
Airbrushing is a messy little bastard, if you’ve never had the pleasure. My own jury is still out on the whole business; I mean, I know I’ve only had two shots at it, but I can’t really see the point so far. It’s messy, it smells weird, you look like a newsreader with it on, it doesn’t come off, it takes longer than normal makeup, and cleaning the gun is a real pain in the can.
see? MESSY!
splotches everywhere from the damn gun spitting! Ffffffuck!
the look now complete with Aunt Sally pink blush
We also did face charts, which is colouring in, but less fun because you’re doing it with makeup that doesn’t stick to paper (if it’s powder) or doesn’t blend properly (if it’s cream). But kind of cool anyway. Here’s my first one:
show us yer cheekbones
So that’s what’s all going on at college, y’all.
Bet you’re wondering what song will accompany today’s flog post. David Bowie? Not today. Not even the Misfits even though I’m wearing my Misfits top in my window portrait up top there. No, not the Misfits. Don’t worry, not Miley either. How about some Korn because it’s a cool video and they’re about to release a new album for the first time in ______ years?
hunky dory
9 Sep
Confused because I make a kind of hot guy?
Don’t be. I just did a Bowie.
LOL
Happy Monday, freaks.
glamour doesn’t take a day off
8 Sep
Which is why I find myself covered in aspirin and honey, and a head full o’ bleach on a Sunday night.
I went to visit Melissa and Che in Edinburgh last night, cos I’m spontaneous like that. We watched Pretty Woman, Che and I got drunk and Melissa didn’t because she’s pregnant, and I made Melissa up as a 90s hooker. Please pay special attention to her lip-line, which was temporarily relocated half an inch down her chin and outlined in brown pencil.
If Melissa was a president, she’d be Baberaham Lincoln.
Pammy knows it.
Unrelated, but here’s another thin lip hero of mine, brought to mind because I spent all day watching Judge Judy.
SHHH! DID I ASK YOU TO SPEAK?
So, I hope you’ve all had a smashing weekend. All one of you who reads this blog. I’m talking to myself, I know. The photo I put on my Facebook page of myself with no eyebrows (as in, a photo of a computer screen with a photo of me up on it, open in Photoshop) was a test, and not a particularly challenging one at that. The photo linked to my flog, where it was revealed that I had, in fact, NOT shaved off my eyebrows. A test that they all failed. You didn’t fail, dear reader, because you read this lofty publication. Now I know who my real friends are 😉
Anyway, here’s Echo and the Bunnymen with Lips Like Sugar because I talked about lips in this post and I like to tie that shit in.
Blogs and kisses Xx
no regrets
4 Sep
I think it makes me look younger.
Only my second week at makeup school and I’ve shaved my eyebrows off.
Just kidding, it was Photoshop all along.
Remember kids, if you DO shave your eyebrows off, you’ll need to learn how to quick-draw your emotions.
This week, I have also been learning AIRBRUSHING!
Imogen Maxwell: Makeup GUN
In the chair is my college, carpool, Facebook, and real life friend Sinead. We spray-painted each other new cheekbones and all.
you can’t tell from the photo but my jawbone was contoured to within an inch of its life. Sinead looked at me in the mirror when she was done, and said “hmm… I’ve just made you look more like David Bowie than you ever meant to, I think.”
to anyone who thinks beauty therapy and makeup artistry aren’t brain surgery, you are wrong.
who wants a lash tint? Cos I can do that.
So as you can see, I’m doing lots and learning lots and having fun. Happy days 🙂
Our (your, not my) respite from hair metal continues, dear reader, but not for much longer. Today’s bangin’ tune is relevant because Rome WASN’T built in a day, and I’m also going to see Morcheeba with my other new friend Aoife. Yep, I’ve fallen in with the Belfast Babes (finally, my dream of joining a gang and click-walking through the corridors is coming true).
Bliss n kisses, kittens
x x x
let’s get brorange
1 SepSo that’s summer (LOL) officially over, you lot. Now we enter the time of walks through crisp fragrant autumnal air, leaves crunching beneath our stylish boots as we make our way towards an inviting-looking cafe for some kind of spiced hot chocolate.
exactly like this
I woke up this afternoon following a very vivid dream in which I was taking loads of selfies with Steven Tyler and having a huge laugh because we couldn’t get one in which at least one of us looked normal. When I woke from this dream I reached for my phone to double check that hadn’t actually happened, and was quite surprised to see the only photo I took last night was this:
oh, Glasgow.
So speaking of Aerosmith here they are with What It Takes, even though I should probably be putting on Dream On. We’re going with What It Takes because it reminds me of Irene.
Happy Sunday, saints and sinners Xx
digital imologue 