Monoboob Cartoon

I noticed that a certain news anchor's dress wasn't working well enough, so I made this cartoon.

I showed my cartoon to Trinny and Susannah of What Not to Wear and they enjoyed it!

The design principles here are, (1) if something is too big, draw a line or a curve through it. In this case, draw a line through the chest area by lowering the neckline.  (2) Make something appear smaller by comparison: big headdress, smaller chest. Naturally I'm not actually suggesting the headdress. It is a cartoon, after all. 

Making Lip Gloss that's OK for Guaifenesin Protocol

 Here's what I do for my own, salicylate-free lip gloss. 

I first got into making cosmetics as an offshoot of my color theory studies. I was initially interested in making customized makeup foundation based on colorimeter readings of the subject's skin tone.  I see that Sephora now has something similar using a Pantone colorimeter which yields suggested matching Sephora foundation brands. I never did get around to making that foundation! But I did eventually end up making my own lip color. 

When I went on the guaifenesin protocol for fibromyalgia, I needed to change my cosmetics to eliminate topical salicylates. Salicylate molecules in castor oil, a common lipstick ingredient, block the receptor sites in the kidney for my medication, rendering it ineffective. 

Being particular about colour, it is great fun for me to mix my own lip colours.  The best looking ones, in my opinion, are when I get to a similar shade or slight offshoot from my own lip color. Although occassionally I enjoy a bright red or some other divergent color. 

So I made a range of lip glosses from cosmetic grade base pigments of red number 7 D&C, semi White Mica, Titanium Dioxide, golden mica, magenta mica, iron oxide brown, yellow no. 5 FD&C (lake), and red mica. I mix pigments into a base of petroleum jelly. With some pigments, a little goes a long way. I store my lip glosses in lidded containers because in very hot weather they can melt a bit. I might try a base of Lanolin or other lip balm ingredients in future, but petroleum jelly suits me just fine for now. I Apply it with a lipstick brush. I am calling them lip glosses but they can be made quite opaque with the addition of titanium dioxide.  I got the pigments and micas from makingcosmetics.com

Alternatively one could keep the individual pigments as primaries mixed into the petroleum jelly, and mix colors on the fly as needed. I do this with the magenta and the brown for when I desire to "purplify" or "brown down" one of my pre-mixed lip colors. 

Clothing Colors Comic

I drew this for a My Favorite T shirt challenge on Sketchclub.  According to Chevreul, colors influence their surround. In effect, colors throw a "halo," which can visibly alter surrounding colors. That is the gist of why colors make a person look vibrant, or unhealthy with blemishes, lines and dark circles emphasized. Below I discuss a a few colors as they pertain to my particular coloring. 

Repeat your Colouring in Your Outfits, or Not?

According to Angie from YouLookFab, that is a good strategy, and it's probably the most common clothing colour strategy.

Sandy Dumont, of the Image Architect, however, believes that skin trumps hair when it comes to clothing color. She believes that colours like orange do not work at all on anyone, at least near the face, if I am understanding her correctly.  She likes to decorate individuals with contrast. 

Pantone Skin Tones

This is pretty cool.

Humanae is a beautiful ongoing portraiture project by artist and photographer Angelica Dass that assigns colors to human skin tone by referencing the PANTONE color system. She records the PANTONE value from an 11 x 11 pixel of the model’s face and creates a background in that exact shade. Her aim is to “record and catalog, through a scientific measurement, all possible human skin tones.” Take a look at her current chromatic inventory of complexions at her Tumblr blog.

If you know what your personal skin shade is, then you can coordinate that color with your clothing, and if it is well coordinated, you won't have the color you wear adversely optically changing your skin color towards unhealthy-looking tones. Clothing colors influence the colors around them, i.e. your skin tone. Chevreul's color fringe effect is mentioned in my previous post.

The folks in the Angelica Dass project could take their pantone chip shopping with them, and see how the color chip looks when held up to the clothing. Does it look darker, lighter, or color-shifted when compared to the clothing?

I do beg your pardon

I started this blog because I wanted to develop an app related to this topic. Unfortunately, life has gotten busy and I had some troubles with my color math. So this project got stalled.

Update 2014: I have been working on another excel project, and I may be able to use those skills to navigate my desired color space. This is an encouraging development, although I still don't have the time to devote to making my clothing color app. 

Sunset

This was the sunset from my backyard last night, brought to you by The Artist Without a Paintbrush.

It is nice that the colors partially offset the headache-inducing atmospheric conditions of the Chinook arch.