some days are way too easy

Here's a quick little ditty to brighten your day. The fantabulous Brandon Witzel and I met up a while ago to discuss some ideas to mess around with and ended up going in an edgy beauty direction. Kelly, our amazing model, was a perfect fit for the project. In makeup terms this was one of my easier shoots as I kept things more simple and graphic; I didn't want to do her a disservice and burden her beautiful face with tons of makeup and therefore used minimal product - a tiny dab of foundation, blush, lipstain, and a brow pencil. The styling was a fun aspect too. It can be difficult to find a stylist to collaborate on a test so I often find I have to pull props and wardrobe and sometimes even make pieces in order to have a shoot come to life. It's amazing what can be accomplished with a little yarn, glue, and styrofoam :)

I kept the colors soft with punches of muted red on her cheeks and lips to bring out her beautiful blue eyes. In regard her eyebrows, I feel like the bleached eyebrow trend has been driven into the ground so I wanted to go in a different graphic direction. I've seen Groucho Marx inspired brows in two different magazines (although I'm sure there are more people doing this and I'm probably late to the game per usual) and this is my take on what I feel may be an upcoming makeup trend. Enjoy!!

photos - Brandon Witzel
makeup, hair, & styling - Amy Gillespie
model - Kelly, Q6












Amy Gillespie, makeup artist, hair, makeup, photo shoot, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, LA, editorial makeup, fashion makeup, beauty makeup, Brandon Witzel, Q6

Commercial Beauty

Lately, I have been trying to amp up the commercial side to my portfolio in addition to adding more beauty shots so what better way to do that than create some commercial beauty images?

I teamed up with one of my favorite photographers in Portland,
Quavondo Nguyen , and Maddi (Option Model Management) and Alexandra (Q6).

Here are some great picks from the shoot. All makeup, hair, and styling by Amy Gillespie.







Amy Gillespie, makeup artist, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, commercial, fashion, beauty, editorial, spring makeup

Kyle Goldie is golden

A few weeks ago I had the great pleasure of working with the talented Kyle Goldie. I have long admired his beauty work and was excited to add some of his images to my body of work.

We knew pretty much from the start that we wanted to do a campaign style series using bulky sweaters, blankets, scarves, etc. I was on board to do styling in addition to my usual duties of hair and makeup so it was up to me to find these articles in the middle of summer. Our first thought was to do neutral makeup with bright colored clothing. However, it was too early in the season to find a great variety of anything along the lines of outerwear. After much frantic shopping I finally struck gold with a few clearance racks and some yardage at a fabric store; the shoot was still on track! I will say, though, this was probably the cheapest shoot I have ever styled. I was able to purchase everything for under $30 and I have some great knit pieces to boot. Stay tuned; I'm sure they will be making an entrance in my wardrobe once our wonderful, crisp fall days arrive.

Since we were working with a much more neutral palette in terms of styling Kyle wanted bright, bold, editorial style makeup. We ended up working with 4 basic color schemes and color placement, some more bold than others but all equally beautiful and artfully blended.

All hair and makeup by Amy Gillespie, Photos by Kyle Goldie, styling by Amy and Kyle, Model Kelby from Heffner.






Amy Gillespie, makeup artist, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, beauty, editorial, fashion, commericial