Sometimes, I experiment with makeup and I hate it. Sometimes I experiment with makeup and I really like it.

I was really bored today, so I did the usual looking up of recipes online, playing of video games and listening to music for like 10 minutes before becoming bored. I’ve been toying with the idea of this look for a while now just in the back of my mind ever since (now I’m gonna go all gay and obscure on you for a bit) drag performance artist Raja (also known as famous makeup artist Sutan Amrull) released the artwork for her latest single Zubi Zubi Zubi (image below) and it made me think about how  when someone just paints their face (insert colour here) for Halloween or whatever they usually go out and buy the cheapest crappiest $2 face paint from the variety store (I say variety store now because i feel “one of those cheap Asian shops” is maybe a bit racist?), they slap it on haphazardly leaving gaps in places and blah blah blah, its effective I guess but it normally looks like absolute shit. What I initially wanted out of this look was to use really nice skin-like products i.e cream makeup, but a combination of budget and “I don’t wanna wait to get paid, then go to bodyfx and find out that they don’t have it or its not quite the shade of (insert colour here) that I want, wow disillusioned now, send to back of brain cabinet” forced me into doing this a lot sooner and a lot less polished than I had anticipated. Back to Raja and Zubi Zubi Zubi, the reason I was so inspired to this by that image (which is below by the way, I haven’t forgotten, I’m getting there) is because it veers so far away from that super matte, flat, patchy gross Halloween skin and ends up looking smooth and beautiful and creamy and like real skin.

So I quickly had to change my aesthetic from this super polished, alternate version of Raja’s Zubi face to a dressed up Halloween face. Not necessarily looking like real skin, but at least looking anything but flat and boring.

Continue reading →