Realistic
Skull Application
Creating
a convincing skull requires a mix of realism and creative liberty; however, you
must be careful with your colors as you do not want
to end up with a completely grey face.
1)Start
with a clean and moisturized face. Apply foundation that is either your natural
skin tone or one slightly lighter and make sure to
blend down your neck and around the collar bone region.
2)Next,
while looking at your reference photos, trace the skull on your face using a
soft brown or gray pencil eyeliner. I used a grey
pencil liner by Nyx. To keep yourself from getting confused, work from the top down. Also, skulls
are not perfectly symmetrical, so don’t worry if all your features don't mirror each
other perfectly.
3)Using
your flat angled brush, fill in your eye sockets with black body paint, I’m
using the water-activated black Pro Paint by Graftobian.
When it comes to your nose, only cover your nose in black body paint where your cartilage is
at, it should be roughly an upside-down heart shape when filled in. Then you will completely cover
your neck and ears in black body paint using your large foundation brush. This will help
you be able to see your other features a little more clearly.
4)Now
use a small detail brush to fill in the teeth with white crème paint, I used
Wet’n’Wild’s white paint pot, and then use either your
white cream paint on a flat brush or a jumbo white cream pencil, such as Wet’n’Wild’s white Jumbo
Body Pencil, to highlight your forehead, cheek bones, chin, and jaw. Don’t blend it out yet
and make sure to use a small brush to fill in the teeth so that you don’t lose any details. Take a
small detail brush and outline your jawbone in black body paint. Then fill in the negative space
below your cheek and above your jawbone with a slightly larger brush using black body paint
as well.
5)Outline
the temple area still using black body paint. We will be shading here later,
so it won’t end up with such a strong contrast.
Carefully, place black lines lightly between the teeth, use slow strokes to avoid making the gaps thick.
6)Take
a makeup sponge and carefully blend out the white highlights on your forehead, cheekbones, jawbones, and chin. Do not blend out
the teeth! Also, be extremely careful when you are blending and don’t blend into the black body
paint or you will just end up grey.
7)Now
take a warm-toned brown eyeshadow, I’m using Note to Self from the Yes Please eyeshadow pallet by Colourpop, on an angled
blending brush and blending down the lines on your forehead. These lines are to add shadow
to where the skull recedes so keep the eyeshadow on the side closest to your ears.
8)Take
that warm brown eyeshadow and blend your temple area. Again, blend towards your ears.
9)Take
your small detail brush and some black body paint and make some small cracks coming from the eye sockets, nose, and
anywhere else it seems appropriate. There are no specific places that need cracks, simply place them
where it feels natural.
10)Use
your small detail brush and fill in the areas between the teeth and the rest of
the negative space between the jawbones with black
body paint. Take your angled blending brush and what is left on it of the warm-toned brown
eyeshadow and gently blend the teeth upwards for the teeth on the upper jaw and downwards for
the teeth on the bottom jaw. Don’t over blend, only blend it enough so there is not a stark
contrast between where the teeth are and where the jawbone is. Now, add some extra highlight to
any areas you need to be paler in and clean up and redefine the teeth if need be. Also, darken up
any of the black body paint that may need it. Make these last alterations and touch-ups and you’re
done!
Here is the final look!!
There are a few alterations you can make to this look if you want to. You could use a washable glue stick and block out your eyebrows or you could fill them in and make it more of a glam look. You could also use a bald cap and continue the makeup onto your head to make it a full skull look.
Here are the products I used:
Also, here are my references:
I used some of the techniques from Glam&Gore's "Last Minute Halloween Makeup Tutorial" which you can find here.
Also, I used a few techniques from Madeyewlook's video "Get Ready With Me ~ ft a new friend" which you can find here.
Finally, I used this image as my main reference.
Thanks for reading! I hope you all enjoyed this post and if so please let me know so I can make more like it!
Love you guys!
~Kate ❤
