JULY BOOKS 2023
This month I've not read as much as I would have liked due most of my reading time being spent on narratology textbooks or research. Also, these three books have been so dense and given me much new pleasure and insight. For any artists, makeup or otherwise, I can't recommend Color Theory enough.
'Reservation Blues' by Sherman Alexie - Minerva, 1996
A beautiful, follicking rock 'n' roll poem of a novel. Losing the last five chapterswould have delivered an even fiercer punch but it's still raw and as perfect a snapshot of life as a twenty something Native American in the 1990's. It's a joy to read and laugh out loud funny in so many places. I'll be trying to find copies for Christmas presents as it's such a heartwarming, real story. It combines the spiritual, the past, the lyrical, the mundane reality in an elegant form, irreverently dispensing with Western chronology to build a new sense of time and history.
'The Sharpest Sight' by Louis Owens - University of Oklahoma Press, 1992
This is the mixed race Mexican and Native American's 'Heart of Darkness', wonderfully rich, deeply symbolic and full of magic and people who are totally alive. It's also one of those books that, for no reason other than the myopic vision of publishers, is out of print yet, in my opinion, worth over a nundred Crime Fiction new releases. It focuses on the parallel journeys of one Mexican American, the detective Mundo Morales, and Cole McCurtain, the half-Native American Indian brother of the body in the novel, convict and Vietam veteran, Attis. It merges the spiritual and three sixty chronology of Mexican and Indian time with the specific limitations of the segment of American history in which they find themselves cornered. It's lyrical, brilliant and intricately plotted. If you want pace, this is not the novel for you, but if you want something that stays with you, a richer flavour and unique perspective, this is. Characters like this are not often found in fiction and, the way Owens crafts them, makes you believe they once existed in reality too. We are the richer for knowing them and the poorer for not.
'Color Theory for the Makeup Artist' by Katie Middleton - Routledge, 2018
No - I am not off on a tangent; this is the route! Love, love this book. It's all part of the forensics. Written by experts for experts, it's clear, beautifully illustrated and explained, packed full of chemistry, biology, physics and yet linking it up with the artistry and pragmatics of application for the working makeup artist. I only read these three books this month as I was re-reading three of these chapters several times! It took a while, but once I had the CYM and RGB wheels in my head, I was off. The RGB gets you so far but you really do need the rationale and the rest to go as far as your imagination. Middleton articulates the things you may instinctively know as an artist but applies them to flesh and blood, enabling you to feel so much more confident when looking at a client's skin and your palette. It's not about how much you can afford at Sephora but at what you can do with the basics you have - and it's quite a lot! NOW I know why formulas are top secret. A must-read for any serious makeup artist - or portrait artist actually. All this will be in book 3, I promise.