2016 MTV VMA's with Sir John Barnett

Beyoncé - Medley LEMONADE (MTV VMA 2016) from Gon on Vimeo.

I had the amazing opportunity to assist Beyonce's MUA Sir John Barnett for the 2016 MTV VMA's.

Here are a few videos and images from Behind the Scenes I was able to capture:

This is a small preview of the body painting: the artists used a mix of a different pro makeup paints to make the pigment as opaque as possible. 

This was the makeup look created by Sir John for the "Spiritual" Dancers: Gold glitter eyes, heavily contoured cheekbones and a purple glitter lip to top it off.

Myself plus a quick clip of the dancers heading to the main stage.

This is one of the dancers I worked on for Beyonce's Lemonade Medley performance.

The "Nefertiti" Dancers

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Sir John is a great teacher, this was my second time assisting him in New York. He works quickly and he expected all of us to work with speed as well. He taught us how to not only work with our brushes to create these looks but to work with our hands to blend the makeup effectively and fast.

This is me with a few of the artists backstage having a quick celebration after everyone was complete; we were so proud, excited and ready to watch the show. We were not allowed to capture any photos of Beyonce' or any of the dance routines, but it was absolutely amazing watching everything come together. We had to complete 80 dancers in hair, makeup, styling and body paint within 5 hours, so most of the time we were really busy getting every one complete.

Here are a few images of the performers on stage with Queen B from Getty Images:

Chicago Artist Studios

If you haven't heard by now, myself and photographer Ten Photos teamed up to create a new, creative space for photographers and artists to rent at a reasonable rate called 

Chicago Artist Studios.

The idea of "Chicago Artist Studios" came about when we noticed a lot of photographers and artists leaving and moving away from Chicago due to a lack of comradery amongst artists and lack of opportunity in Chicago. There are actually really great opportunities and work in Chicago but if no one talks about it, unfortunately no one knows about it. There's also an issue when the photographer or artist comes back to Chicago, they usually have no place to set up and work for their clients.  There are very little to no studio spaces available for hourly rentals in Chicago, so we wanted to change things up and create one. We want to break the barrier and link makeup artists with photographers, photographers with models, models with hair stylists, and hair/makeup artists with the agencies in Chicago.

Our mission is to help photographers, agencies and artists not only in Chicago but to also help artists from all around the Midwest who need a space to rent so they can effectively work on their job, project, event, or photoshoot in a professional atmosphere.  We will also host exclusive events and team up with some of the most innovative nail artists, makeup artists and hair stylists for education classes and networking parties. We want to branch out and create opportunities by connecting the top model agencies in Chicago with some of the best photographers and artists in the Midwest. 

We hope Chicago Artist Studios will create more networking, relationship building and unity between all the artists in Chicago.

We hosted our Grand Opening Celebration on Saturday, February 13th, 2016.  Our food was catered by Oh! Chefs. Here are a few photos from our event, there are many more on our website:

If you are a photographer or artist in the Midwest, don't hesitate to contact us. We welcome all artists to use our space. There will be more events coming very soon, check the blog on our website to stay updated on the latest:

ChicagoArtistStudios.com