On the road again… featuring a giant mouse.

It’s EUROTOUR time!!!!!
For the past two years, I’ve been touring Europe in the Autumn, but this time I’m giving it a go in Summer. You know, just to be different. (And also because I’m saving up for a possible Australia or Los Angeles holiday this Autumn).

As of yet, I do not have set dates for Europe but I am looking at June 10th-July 15th. If you are in any of the countries below and would like to be added to my mailing list, get in touch ASAP! The possible “available working day” breakdown is listed below…
Holland: 7 days
Romania: 5 days
Sweden: 5 daysBelgium: 5 days
Germany: 10 days

I will begin advertising, but after I’ve mailed my mailing list so if you’d like first pick of days or to ask me to visit your city, now is the time to do it!

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I’m very excited to be so inspired with writing at the moment. The ‘problem’ is that the weather is beautiful and I feel a bit guilty for sticking myself inside. I took the long route back to the mothership the other day so that I could walk through the park, which is filled with giant oak trees standing in twos. As yesterday was Beltane (second-biggest pagan festival and said to be a time when the veil between the  worlds opens), the trees did look like sentinels and as I turned around on the spur of the moment, there was a kestrel hovering a few metres behind me. Couldn’t get a picture of him, but I did get these…

I popped out to the garden to have a quick walk around and am now watching the fat round sparrows in the hedge and one solitary swallow sitting on the telegraph wire. They sound as happy as I will be tomorrow. I’m off on a ‘cake date’ with one of my best ladies!
I’ve decided to be a night owl tonight and wait for the sun to go down before I hit the writing again. 😉 I promise you’ll get an extract soon.

Now, as I’ve been latexing you to death recently, have some awesome nudes taken by Gary Breckheimer during my last New York trip. I actually wrote an “alt” city review about New York that I just reread and for once am still happy with. Tonight, I’m going to look for a magazine or website interested in publishing it and if not, you guys can see it anyway!

So… these were taken at around 5am; the earliest I had been wandering around central New York, which was a little freaky as the sun wasn’t up when I left. It was a “shoot and run” situation- setting up the shot, checking nobody was around and then dashing off as fast as possible. Some of the shots (I’m thinking especially of my favourite- the mouse one) felt more like a special military operation, or the escape scene in Minority Report– involving ducking behind large objects, waiting until I was out of eyeline, and turning to walk in the other direction as soon as the shot was taken, as though nothing had happened.

Don’t you just LOVE this freaky mouse!!!!?? It’s like a nightmare- I love it! 😀

Speak to you soon, with something completely different!

ROSWELL xxx

JFC part 2: Film Noir

It’s getting dark now and usually I have ‘sleeves issues’- I don’t like wearing sleeves. It’s enormous boots, trousers and skintight vest tops for me 90% of the time (to the point where a friend described me as looking like a video-game assassin the other day. Thanks B, I will take that as a compliment!) However, I have now bought a big swishy coat that gives me a “film noir”-ish silhouette and I quite like it, sleeves and all. Too bad I didn’t have it in New York- I’d have loved to shoot in a dark side-street wearing it. Anyone fancy a sunset/night time shoot? 😉

I found a lot of the night-time city very bright; making my sleepy way back from a photoshoot and realising 42nd Street was the same as Times Square, I had to come and have a look. Sticking my head out from the underground (and probably blinking like a mole in the sunlight), I was visually assaulted by a hundred different advertisements at once, all glowing against a very black sky. I only came to have a look and as I had my suitcase, dived back underground unimpressed and thinking ‘well, I came, I saw it…’
A few days later after another photoshoot and with a lot less luggage, I found myself in Times Square again, but a moody, dusky Times Square that felt completely different. Isn’t it strange how the same exact spot can change based on so many small factors?
Look at this… have any of you seen a film called Dark City?

Anyway, I think these photos remind me of some kind of Film Noir stills…

Photographer: John F Cooper
Make-up: Me
Basque: Gossard (thanks for the lendage, Easy Tiger!)

Look at the studio corridor- so spooky/cool!

I can’t decide which of these edits I prefer- the colour or the black and white! Which do you prefer? 🙂

I still have a lot more images to show you from this shoot, so keep an eye out! 😉
For now though, have a preview of one hair/make-up look and a location…

Speak to you soon,

ROSWELL xxx

JFC part 1: Fairytale of New York

I apologise in advance to anyone who now has the song in their head and is now cursing me for mentioning Christmas songs in September. 😛

If you’re a regular reader, you probably know that I’m the biggest country bumpkin around. (If you’ve just got here, hello- I hope you’ll stay!)  You might also know that my first novel, which I’m currently editing, is about a disaster (like Hiromshima) occuring in a woodland full of strange Fae creatures and the subsequent mutations that occur. If you’re interested, it’s called Sarascyon and I’ll be posting an extract here soon.
I was a little apprehensive about visiting New York as I get a bit tetchy if there aren’t any trees. While I get inspiration from everywhere from the English coast to the gritty abandoned churchyard I see from the train on my way to London, I go to the woodland if I want to be calm. I feel at home with trees and there aren’t many in the Big Apple.

I live near a lot of parks- most are big, and if you walk far enough in, you can forget that there are roads to either side and the only paths become those you make yourself. I expected Central Park to be a green oasis of wilderness and sprawling trees within the city’s invasion of angles. I thought I’d escape from the traffic for a few hours between shoots- read my book and eat my sushi, so when I arrived and was nearly run over first by joggers and then by cars (there are ROADS in Central Park), I revised my opinion a bit. I am sure there are more eloquent ways to put this but… parks should not have angles.

And so my search for nature continued…

Luckily, I was staying in Brooklyn (with photographer Paul Ward). The garden at the back was a little rectangle of clearly very loved and cared-for land, chock-full of flowers, squirrels and bluejays that sound disturbingly like birds of prey (so much so that I, in a sleepy bleary-eyed state, thought an eagle was in the tree).
Just down the road was Brooklyn Botanical Garden so on my first day off, I took myself on an adventure. I’d have loved to shoot there- the amount of different themes and concepts that could have been done in there… Maybe one day!

A few days later, I dashed to an area of Brooklyn called DUMBO! (I think I was told it stands for Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) to shoot with John F Cooper for his book Organic Portraits. There are some examples of the work in his portfolio- I’ve linked it. 🙂 It’s in aid of the Rainforest Fund.

The project supports indigenous people in their efforts to protect their environment. It makes me feel ashamed of my species to know that our actions affect the lives of people who have no hand at all in the changing state of our planet, yet find their day to day life increasingly impossible. These people have the words to express what the voiceless flora and fauna also nearing extinction can not. They are in exactly the same situation, and give it a human voice- a perspective we can empathise with.
I tried to use this idea as inspiration for this part of our photoshoot.

Photographer: John F Cooper
Hair/Make-up: Me

I rose from my dream last night. I thought I saw them again- living columns that sang and swayed

But now, they are up there where the dead are. Too high for me to reach.

So when I woke, I wore their memory like the crown only I had, and only I remember

Long ago, trees, not memories, cast shadows on my face.

ROSWELL xxx

Publications!

Hello there and happy August (it’s my birthday* month and the sun was shining today!)

I’m really happy to share some of my latest publications with you as I’ve been doing a *lot* of writing and stuff!
My latest article is now live on Univers D’Artistes and I’m asking whether genital photography can ever be considered ‘art’. I was a bit nervous publishing it, as people have strong opinions… and I had to trawl through some absolute terrors online to find suitable images! 😉
Here’s the link: Can Genital Photography Ever Be Considered Art?

I’m also featured in an article published in photography magazine Camera Obscura- it’s about Irish photographer Eamonn Farrell. I love Ireland- there are so many dramatic landscapes and I’m already looking forward to my Spring tour even though the weather is often horrendous and I have a very vivid memory of sitting in a freezing waterfall at 5am… then gettting back in as I wanted to make doubly sure the cold didn’t show on my face and I had posed to the best of my ability. Despite the shivering, I had a great time working with Eamonn (highly recommended) and it’s nice to see his project gain the recognition it deserves.
Click the link! There are some other familiar faces in the piece- Nudes in the Irish landscape

And here’s a photo from the shoot, that I don’t think I ever posted! (by Eamonn Farrell)

It’s been a month full of rain showers and beautiful sunlight, so I’ve been sitting inside writing, then feeling guilty for being a couch potato on such a lovely day, then going for a walk and being hit in the face with a rainstorm! (Good thing I like rainstorms). I had one of my best friends, alt model Easy Tiger staying last weekend so despite the odd weather we ran around like mad things, had our pictures taken by photographer G Haskew and ate halloumi.
I’ll put pictures up when I have them but I do have this wonderful outtake that I not going to even try to explain…

Look at one of our locations!

I’m off to Montreal at the end of the month for the fetish weekend- very excited- I’ve never been to Canada! As New York is only a short hop away, I thought I’d take myself there for some exploring. I’m not sure how I’ll like New York as I’m very much a country bumpkin, but I like art galleries, I heard there was a pretty hanging garden somewhere and I’m hoping I’ll get some good blogs out of it (may have to channel Carrie Bradshaw, but without the awful dress sense.) 😉 I’ll let you know!

I’m hoping to be able to show you some very colourful photos and even a video from a fashion show I did a little while ago. Stay tuned! I’m going to do some stretching now in preparation for my first contortion bondage shoot on Saturday… 😉

ROSWELL xxx

* I would like to thanks all my very kind fans who have sent me a birthday present from my wishlist. That is lovely of you, and you should receive a personalised gift back from me shortly!
If you would like to send me a gift, I have a wishlist here: CLICK THE LINK! 🙂