Me, Myself and I...

Me...

For my first blog post, I thought I would tell you all a little bit about myself. My name is Philippa Dawn Louise McGee, I am 19 years old and I am from Liverpool in the UK. After I left school at 16, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life or what I wanted to study/do as a career. After a summer of reading through different college course books, I decided to take a level 2 BTEC in Art and Design. I have always been a more creative than academic person and after art being my favourite subject at school, I decided to study it at college. The course was a year long and I came out with the grade of a Merit which is the equivalent of a B. During my time on the course, I discovered my passion for photography and decided this was what I wanted to do next with my life so I enrolled at the same college to do a level 3 BTEC in photography and graphics. I really enjoyed photography and I learnt so much on the course, I felt like I really pushed myself and gained so much knowledge about something I was passionate about. Many times, we would do studio work and for one particular project, it was fashion based and we had to create a theme and I picked 'glitter'. For this, I decided to research different  glitter makeup looks and I came up with 5 ideas of my own to create. Whilst working on this project, I did the makeup on my model and it was this moment that I realised I was interested in makeup. I enrolled on a 10-week fashion and photographic makeup course. I absolutely loved this course and I learnt so much in such a short amount of time. After the course finished, I had a portfolio of makeup looks I had done and also a Level 3 makeup qualification. At this stage, I knew that makeup was what I wanted to do as my career and I wanted to further my studies so my next step was to apply to university. I applied to Bournemouth, Southampton and London College of Fashion. Southampton was my first choice, as soon as I went for my interview, I absolutely fell in love with everything. The city, the university, the course, the tutors, everything. I went for my interview and they told me it would be about a week before I heard back, so we started the long drive back to Liverpool and after about an hour, I received an email saying I had been given a conditional offer. I was so excited, I actually screamed in the car (my mum almost crashed the car, oops). I finished my course with Distinction, Distinction, Merit (AAB) and I got my place at Southampton Solent University.

I absolutely adore makeup and anything to do with it. I really love the fashion side of it and I think that's where I want to lean my career towards. I would absolutely love to work for Fashion Week and also for high end fashion magazines such as Vogue. I would also like to work in the TV and Film industry and whilst at university, I would like to learn prosthetics makeup incase I ever did want to go towards that side of makeup. There are so many artists I would love to work with, Alex Box and Karla Powell would be my two dream makeup artists to work with. Both are so unique and creative and have done work so different that's never been seen before. I would also like to take in Alex Box's footsteps and work with a big brand such as Illamasqua or Mac and create my own makeup line as well as creating my own makeup book full of my work and tips and guidance for other makeup artists. My ultimate goal is to be able to travel the world and I am so lucky and blessed to have chosen a career in which I have the opportunity to do this.