Turning people into art
Makeup used to create living paintings
KENTVILLE N.S. — Last year, a Kentville art gallery was looking for a way to draw people in during the Apple Blossom Festival and asked Jaimie Corbin for help.
Corbin is co-owner of Phantom Effects, a special-effects makeup and technicians company in the town. She wasn’t interested in the gallery’s first idea of face painting for kids. “That was a big no,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t like kids, but that’s not my thing. I told them to give me some time and I would think about.”
On her bucket list of things to try was something similar to two artists she follows on social media. They paint people with paint and also create painted backgrounds to create a full piece of art.
She had another artist paint a background and used makeup to turn herself into a portrait of 20th-century Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Then she stood in a display window at the gallery.
“I was there the entire day and scared the crap out of people, it was so awesome. People walk by and think you’re a mannequin,” she said.
“I enjoyed that experience so much that I needed to figure out a way to make it affordable for people.”
Mimicking the process of painting a background would make the service too expensive for the local market, Corbin said, and is an immense amount of work that she doesn’t have time to do in any event because she has a day job. So, she uses her graphic design background and shoots a photo of her customer on a green screen and adds in the background.
Since starting last June, she has done about four dozen portraits. She likes to follow her own style but also works with people who have a particular concept in mind.
One customer wanted to see themselves as a Vincent van Gogh self-portrait. Corbin said that one turned out well.
“It’s a challenge to emulate what another artist has done, but I have my own style and kind of like to have the creative freedom,” she said.
The sessions are three or four evenings a week, outside of her day job in Halifax. Most, involving just the head and hands, take two hours, but doing the body from the waist up is closer to four.
There’s no need to stay still or avoid blinking, though.
“We have conversation, we have a drink of wine,” Corbin said.
“It’s very casual, it’s very laid back and relaxed.”
OUT OF THE BOX
Cora Moore of Cambridge had a recent session that she said she decided to do because it was “more or less stepping out of my box a little.”
She had skin cancer three years ago and has since recovered.
“Going through that kind of eight-month battle, this is (in line with) stepping out of my box and doing things I wouldn’t normally do,” she said.
She has helped Phantom Effects in the past by being a character in its annual charity haunted house. She had been watching Corbin’s posts on the living art portraits.
“Seeing the work she’d done already, it really interested me.”
Moore said she decided to be a blank canvas and left the concept up to Corbin.
“I’m pretty open and just let her go with the flow.”
She said that included whether she was covered up or showing the effects of her cancer and treatment.
“If it shows that I have big scars, I’m fine with that,” she said.
In the end, Corbin went with a 1920s theme. Her other works include a Victorian-era maid, a superhero and an Andy Warholinspired piece. Examples can be found at phantomeffects.com.