Catriona’s Halloween house of horrors
A self-taught teenage makeup artist is transforming New Plymouth faces into a mess of blood and gore for Halloween.
Catriona Oates, 17, has been working out of her bedroom, bringing gruesome designs to life with latex, tissue, scissors and fake blood. To add to the horror, the Spotswood College student is carrying out her gruesome Halloween tasks in between preparing for her NCEA Level 3 exams.
Oates spent all day Saturday creating scary faces on five clients who were celebrating Halloween that night.
She planned to be transforming more people before school today – Halloween – and again this weekend.
‘‘It’s fun,’’ she says. ‘‘I like to create different things and make it gory, creative and freaky.’’
Apart from undertaking a course at the Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki (WITT), Oates is self-taught, and has also used Youtube videos to learn how to create scratches and shredded skin.
‘‘It really interested me. I thought it looked so cool,’’ she said.
Starting out with blood and latex from the $2 shop she gradually built her kit to involve more expensive items that look more realistic.
Charging $40 for her Halloween looks, she gains most of her clients through Instagram and Facebook, where she posts photos and videos of her work.
She perfected her art on herself for two years before moving on to other people, although she admits she was never good at traditional forms of artistry.
‘‘The best I can probably do is a stick figure,’’ she said.
The special effects can take anywhere between one to three hours depending on the complexity of the look.
‘‘I just sit there and create what comes to my mind.
‘‘Sometimes I’ll see someone else do it and adapt it into my own,’’ she said.
She manages to practise makeup around school and a part-time job at McDonald’s.
‘‘I get ready, decide what I’m going to do, do it, take photos and then post it.’’
After leaving secondary school at the end of this year she will move to Wellington to take a year’s special effects course at the Wellington Institute of Technology (WelTec).
Her dream job is to do special effects makeup at Weta Workshop, home of blockbuster films, but Oates says she still has a way to go. ‘‘I think I need to learn a bit more. I can do good stuff but there’s a lot more out there.’’