Men face painting
ExceptioNailBeauty - Spring 2008
When I find myself doing makeup for a group of girls accompanied by their boyfriends, the boys resist the temptation of getting made up until I propose masculine makeup. Men want to scare us with dragons, tigers and monsters, in the same way as they like to wear the characteristics of Super Heroes or powerful knights on their faces.
We can explain this phenomenon by the fact that it is more important for the young man to be in a position of dominating the world, which he accomplishes by means of a character impersonation. To the contrary, girls seek to attract attention by the beauty and the uniqueness of their makeup. All fantasy makeup artists must create within the confines of these existing stereotypic differences between the imaginations of young girls and those of young boys. Given that our role as makeup artists is to entertain our cusomers, the only change we can bring to the existing stereotypic tendencies is to enrich our repertory of models and to become multi-purposes artists.
If you allow me to use my own experience as an example, during my first years as a makeup artist, I experienced certain difficulties when it came to making up males. I thus had to make an effort to stay on top of all the latest styles and taste for male makeup. Since then, I am constantly enriching my repertory of masculine models. A few examples are a ‘warlike’ princess for the teenegar in fury, a mask of virility for the eccentric young man, different variations of Super Heroes for the young girls with more textures, and while we’re at it, why not add a little more somptuousness for the boys. Even if all forms of creativity including technical aspects remain accessible to whomever, the same capacity of attraction differentiated between the sexes also affects the actual makeup artist. Whether we are trained to be different or we are different from birth, all that surrounds us puts forth a distinctive force of attraction on each of us, and these personal attractions influence our choices as creators. We are thus able to observe that the majority of makeup done by women artists shows a great deal of finesse with detailed forms, striking colors and a resemblance to abstract art. Those carried out by the male makeup artists show a more prominent penchant towards realism, with the focus on texture or the representation of an environment, executed with perfect volume.
The ideal comparison to demonstrate these differences would be to compare the work of Jinny, whose work tends to be floral with beautiful curves, with those of the Wolfe Brothers, whose work is very linear and robotic, using obvious realism. With their mastered abilities and amazing composition, the duo never ceases to impress, thanks to their versatile talents. They can work with delicacy and feminity on the one hand, while successfully creating the look of mechanical objects on the other. In the same way, Jinny is known for reproducing the optical illusion in clothing on a naked body with its natural shades and folds.
As a makeup artist, no matter what your personal style is, you must challenge yourself. Do you like the arabesques and the curves ? Try broken lines and geometrical forms. Your brush stroke is abrupt ? Force yourself to integrate more roundness in your work. Are you skilled in producing light effects and volumes ? Try inventing a composition abstracted in flat tint and vice versa. This technical effort will not harm your work ; to the contrary, it will enrich it. You will thus be able to renew your imagination and consequently stimulate the imagination of those poeple, great and small, to be made up.
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