Friday, October 5, 2012

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL - Realistic Skull Makeup

Hello everyone!

Over the years, it has become more and more clear to me that I have the coolest birth date ever. And for anyone who doesn't know me personally; I was born on October 31st, also known as Halloween! I think Halloween is a hugely undercelebrated holiday here in Holland. No trick-or-treating, no scary decorations. If you're lucky there might be a half decent dress-up party somewhere not too far away. So, as a Halloween child, I felt obligated to breathe new life into this day and show everyone how awesome it can be!

That's why I'm going to show you some scary, gory, unsightly Halloween looks that are often way easier to recreate than you might think. I've never, ever done looks like these before, but I'm loving it already. To officially launch this series, I've chosen a classic Halloween symbol that I'd been wanting to try and recreate for a while ..

The skull. *scary movie tune*



This is how mine turned out. Pretty cool, huh? I swear, it was way easier to do than it looks. Instead of giving you a step by step tutorial, I decided to give you some guidelines and tips to create your own, because it's much easier to free-hand your own than to replicate someone else's. So if you want to try this one too, keep this in mind:
  • There's no such thing as a perfectly symmetric skull. If you take a close look, my 'eyebrows' are crooked, my cheekbones are uneven and my teeth look completely random. But this doesn't matter for the overall picture.
  • Start off with a light base. I would recommend that you use a light foundation instead of a white base to begin with. This way, you can still add some white highlights on the brow bone, the cheekbones, the teeth, et cetera, to create more depth ánd it will give you a more realistic brown-ish bone-color in the end.
  • When the base is on, work on your basic black shapes using some type of a cream product (eyeliner pencil, cream eyeshadow). At this point, you're probably thinking that it'll end up looking stupid and ugly (that's what I thought anyway). But no worries, it'll work out fine. Just draw the shape of your eye sockets (just feel where the actual bone is - you can always expand them later), draw a triangle on your nose and draw the teeth. Don't blend anything yet. At this point there should only be harsh shapes and lines (which is why it looks so stupid).
  • What I actually did to create a guideline for the placement of the black shapes is what you see in the picture below. I looked up a picture/drawing of a skull and sized it up to my own face. That way I could tell how wide my teeth were supposed to be, how high I should draw the cheekbones, and so on. This helped me out a lot!
  • So once you're pretty much satisfied with the basic shapes, there's the part that'll bring your skull to life: blending and contouring. I pretty much had no clue where or how to contour on this one, so I started carefully, but I soon found out that pretty much éverything should be blended. I took a medium sized fluffy brush with some black and dark brown shadows on it, and simply started running it along every harsh black line. The more, the better. You really can't go wrong with this, so just keep finetuning until your satisfied.
  • Cool contouring tip: Make a huge frown and trace the wrinkles in your forehead. Now, when you relax your face, you've got a permanent frown! Yay!
  • To make my skull look more ancient and cool looking, I added some cracks on the forehead and jaw. This, too, is a completely random process of drawing a harsh line and blending it a little with some shadow.
  • The number one rule is to have fun with it. If you just take your time and use your imagination, you'll be amazed by what you can achieve!
My guideline to where my eyes, teeth and nose should be.

Hope you enjoyed this one guys! Stay tuned for the next, super gory one!

Love,
Linde

9 comments:

  1. Way Cool! Niet te geloven dat je dat zo mooi hebt gemaakt, het is kunst, zeer zeer zeer mooi.

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  2. Wow! Ik dacht dat de eerste foto gewoon een plaatje was, of een foto van internet. Maar jebent het zelf?! Holy f.... WAT GAAF!

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  3. What kind of black make-up did you use? Could I use just a black cream make up?

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    1. Of course, that'll work just fine :) I actually used a black jumbo pencil, and you could even use cream eyeliner!

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    2. Of course, that'll work just fine :) I actually used a black jumbo pencil, and you could even use cream eyeliner!

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  4. Holy crap, this is AMAZING Linde! You are soooo talented! And how fun to have a birthday that falls on such a fun holiday! I LOVE Halloween! :D HAPPY (early by a day) BIRTHDAY, LINDE!!

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    1. I hadn't even read this yet! Thank youuuu Becca, this comment made my day!!! :)

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  5. wow, amazing and awesome halloween makeup! You look so cool!
    thanks for sharing

    - Cristine

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