Face Off 08×06 – Queen Bees (SPOILERS)
SPOILERS
We start things off with a hat related Foundation challenge. There’s a bunch of different hats/headdresses to choose from. We also have a familiar face for a guest judge – Lois Burwell! And she’s wearing a hat! She tells them that she’s looking for a very clean makeup. She really likes Rob’s and Emily’s. Rob gets a rather simple top hat, and he does an aged Pinocchio. Emily gets a huge jeweled headdress, and goes with a princess who has rhinestones all over her, and plenty of gold and silver. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and she wins immunity. It’s a good thing too, because the next Spotlight challenge is going to be a tough one. Body Panting. The first body painting challenge since Season 2.
And, we also have a Season 2 guest – Nix Herrera. And OMG, I’ve been playing Dragon Age Inquisition, and Nix *totally* looks like Dorian. All he needs is some magical powers and a real life Iron Bull. <3 He’s a body painting specialist, so he’s there to advise them for this challenge. What they have to do is split into teams of 2, and go find a ‘habitat’ where their nude models will be waiting. They have to make a Queen insect and a companion body paint that can be anything. They’ll be doing the Spotlight Challenge in the woods, and have 5 hours. Afterwards, and photographer will come around, and the judges will go by the pictures.
Emily and Jamie are working together again (they worked together on the sound challenge and were very successful as a team), and they choose the honey bee. Rob and Adam choose the ladybug (I actually hate ladybugs. We have infestations of them in our house sometimes, and they’re annoying and smell bad when you squish them). Ben and Kelly get the European hornet. Darla and Stephanie get the jewel beetle, which is really colorful and pretty! Lastly, Logan and Julian pick the cuckoo wasp, which is also really colorful and doesn’t look like a typical wasp around here.
Right from the start, Kelly and Ben aren’t working that hot together. They want to do totally different things, and aren’t really compromising. Ben is hellbent on doing a blend, and Kelly wanted to do it where the two models came together to create one bug. Anthony comes around, and he’s really worried about their concept being too boring. And something that Ben didn’t think about is the sun moving since they’re outdoors, so he has to constantly check his colors to make sure the blend is working. So they get put behind schedule, and still aren’t working well together.
Logan is also not feeling this challenge at all. They want to do a Queen and larvae on the ground, but Laura thinks that’s the wrong direction. She thinks the judges won’t get that it’s a larva since they don’t have reference images, and she starts posing the same kinds of questions they’d get on the reveal stage. Funnily enough, her idea for them is the same that Kelly had, where the top half of the Queen is the female model, and the male model is the abdomen, since the cuckoo wasp’s abdomen is such a different color from the rest of its body.
Darla and Stephanie are also a team that kind of has to change their idea partway through. They were going to do the male as a blend, but then decide that he’s going to be the wings on the beetle, but that means almost starting from scratch on Darla’s behalf, and making opaque wings look translucent through paint, which is NOT easy. Time’s their biggest enemy.
Adam and Rob want to do a riff on the Sistine Chapel with the famous painting of God and Adam, but it’s a Queen ladybug and her larva. Rob’s worried since he was on the bottom last week, so he gets right into painting his model’s ass. Literally. They then switch it up and work on each others’ characters. Rob paints the face, and then his model has to do her own hair, because he doesn’t know how.
The next day, they’re all really nervous because they didn’t get to see the final photograph before the judges. Here are the final looks:
Logan and Julian’s Cuckoo Wasp:
Turned out GREAT. Look at the armor plating on the female model! So kick ass. That was all Logan. Not bad for someone who was terrified to do body painting.
Darla and Stephanie’s Jewel Beetle:
I agree with the criticisms with the wings being too high, and the boobs not being blended out, but I still like this one more than the judges seem to. The face is so pretty.
Adam and Rob’s Ladybug:
The Kabuki Queen of the insect world. The Queen is not looking good, and this is definitely the weakest of all the female characters. They’re in trouble.
Emily and Jamie’s Honey Bee:
SO GORGEOUS OMG. I LOVE the face on the Queen. So regal. They did a nice job of feathering the paint to make it look kind of fuzzy (since honey bees are really fuzzy). The honeycomb pattern that Emily added on the collarbones of the Queen looks stunning.
Kelly and Ben’s European Hornet:
The team with no teamwork. Glenn calls them out hardcore on that. There’s decent painting in there, and Ben’s blend is pretty good, but you can tell it was two people working separately.
The top teams are pretty clear – Logan and Julian, and Emily and Jamie. I personally love Emily and Jamie’s because the Queen is so sexy, and I love the colors, and I’m a big fan of bees (in the summer, I’ll sit in the porch and just watch them fly in and out of the flowers). Logan wins, and he does deserve it, because the exoskeleton painting on his Cuckoo Wasp was just so damn good. He’s the first repeat winner of the season thus far.
The bottom looks are Kelly and Ben, and Adam and Rob. I was pretty certain Rayce was going to lose a third person in a row, since the Ladybug had more problems, and they both worked on the face of the ladybug, which was the part that was working the least. But it’s Rob that’s sent home. So now Rayce is down to two people on his team.
And I just gotta say that when I was downloading the images for this week’s final looks, I saw what the subject matter is for next week – Clive Barker!!!!! OMGOMGOMGOMGOMFGGGGGGGG!
