Picture this: Suddenly your calendar says “Oct. 31” and you don’t have a clue what you’re going to whip together for this weekend’s party. By now, all the best costumes are rented, right?
Fear not: The Friday section gazed deep into its crystal ball, divining tips to help you transform into an Allhallows’ Eve vision.
You’ve already got everything you need to become something supernatural: Your face is the canvas, your hands the tools.
Oh, and you’ll need a few products–but a little makeup never hurt anyone. OK, a lot of makeup, and we should know: We consulted the experts; channeled our inner demons; endured the glue, the pancake and the aerosol. Then we took to the streets to disturb the innocent.
Welcome to the Extreme Halloween Makeover.
For some people, Halloween is a High Holy Day–and Juliet White counts herself in that number. Though she majored in drawing in Oakland, she’s made her career as a makeup artist and is currently one of a team of five who transform 48 actors into the colorful menagerie of “The Lion King.”
Although she can do it all, from standard skin tones to the multicolored face of Rafiki the baboon, White is happiest when developing an outre look–preferably something with fangs or horns. “I could do something twisted every hour on the hour, if I were allowed,” she said.
“She could,” Adia Ginneh nodded in assent. As the actress who plays the adult Nala in “The Lion King,” Ginneh has gotten to know White over the last six months, as White does her face every night. But the actress got to try on a very different look for our Extreme Makeover. Ginneh got a touch of White’s wicked whimsy, becoming a beautiful lavender witch. Your humble writer, meanwhile, fell under a more evil enchantment, losing his hair and sprouting devilish horns.
Although the makeup processes used by White may seem complicated, you can glean tips or suggestions for your own Extreme Makeover.
When White asked me, pre-makeover, what kind of character I wanted to be, I said, “Something with horns.” From there, she developed my demon creature–although she said she didn’t know exactly how the makeover would evolve until I actually sat down in front of her and her muse kicked in.
The metamorphosis began with a bald cap. “This way I don’t have to worry about your hair,” she said. Also, it gave her a bigger canvas: “With the bald cap, I have room to do so much more. I can take the cheekbone shading higher, I can lift the eyebrows higher.”
She produced a film-quality cap from Cinema Secrets, a company she described as “the mother ship for makeup artists in Southern California.” Very thin yet durable, it was also surprisingly comfortable. We put it on my head so she could measure it to fit around my ears, then she took it off for trimming while I slicked down my curls with a water spritzer. After an application of hair spray (gel is even better), the cap went back on and fit like a glove, stretching down my neck to completely conceal all my hair. “If someone has really long hair, I’ll French-braid it down the back of their neck,” she added. “Then they wear a high collar, so you can’t really see anything.”
White affixed the bald cap with a heavy-duty prosthetic glue, then used acetone to help smooth the edges into my skin. (This was the only truly unpleasant part of the process–a stinging exacerbated because I’d shaved that morning.) White said anyone could get “a pretty good effect” using a cheap bald cap from a costume shop and spirit gum to glue it down.
In a move that surprised me, she brandished a glue stick like kids use. “I dampen the tip of a non-toxic glue stick and press it into the eyebrows in an upward motion,” she explained. “It flattens them out against the skin, so I can put makeup over them without interference. I can do highlights and shadows right over your natural brow … and then it washes out really easily.”
We were ready for the first application of makeup. As a rule, she likes to cover all the skin. “It’s like priming the canvas before you paint,” she said. She chose a shade considerably darker than my own skin and applied it everywhere–on the bald cap, my ears, my neck. With a thin brush, she then began to paint highlights (using a pale cream makeup) and shadows (using a very dark color) onto my face, especially my brow, my nose and my cheeks. She blended them into the base coat as she went. “I’m accentuating the features of your face,” White said of the highlighting and shading process, “but at the same time I’m slightly altering them to create a more demonic character.”
Next she applied the same colors using a stipple sponge, which has an uneven surface and looks something like a small Brillo pad. “I’m creating texture, so [your skin] doesn’t look like this smooth flat surface,” she explained. People can get the same stippling effect, she said, by taking an old rubber sponge or foam makeup applicator and ripping the edges.
When I looked in the mirror, I was amazed at how different the shape of my face appeared–my cheeks narrower, my nose longer. Neat! When I was already half-transmogrified, the other model, Ginneh, arrived; she was surprised to learn I’m not really bald. “Wow, Juliet!” she said.
More advanced detail work came next, first with eyeshadows, then with liquid liners, to add more dimension and interest. With the powders, she introduced new earth tones around my eyes. Then came high-pigment black liquid eyeliner–“my Halloween staple, used for creating extreme depth,” she said–that were applied to my brows. On my lips, she painted a black cream makeup. (No using Q-Tips, White pointed out. Much better instead to buy thin brushes at a makeup counter or an art-supplies shop.)
Then she added her freakiest touch: Using a very tiny brush, she traced the inside of my bottom lid with very thin line of theatrical cream red makeup, as close to the eyeball as she could. “That bright red–it’s called Injury Red, used to create cuts and sunburns–it just stands out,” White said. “It looks sore. And evil.” And how.
The finishing touches came when she added two sets of foam horns on my dome and wrapped multicolored hair extensions around the horns. She also gave me a mouthful of this wickedly fun paste from Cinema Secrets, which tasted like cinnamon candy as it dissolved into a bloody mess. The initial over-the-top effect didn’t last long, but a sickly red residue lingered. (For a recipe to make your own fake blood, see the sidebar.)
Color plays a big part for White when she decides where to take the makeover. She channeled the details of my dark demon, she said, by “just looking at you and your clothing. I was feeling the same colors too, the whole earthy vibe. The night before, I had a feeling I was going to be using the ochre and the burgundy and the rust colors. I think we’re feeling those colors because of the season, and then it works with your natural coloration.”
Color also guided her choices for Ginneh, who became a frosty, sexy sorceress. “I don’t want to be evil–I know that much,” said Ginneh. White had a vision of contrasting palettes, so she chose a very pale base instead of the stereotypical green for her witch. “I want to go the complete opposite of you,” White told me, “away from your colors and away from her warm complexion with a cool lavender. It’s such a beautiful death color.”
After giving Ginneh a wig cap (in preparation for the crowning touch about 60 minutes later) and matting down her eyebrows with the non-toxic glue stick, White began “priming the canvas” with a very pale purple base. Atop that, “I stippled an icy baby blue, to give it more texture,” she said. Especially from a distance, Ginneh looked ghastly white, but the more you looked at her, the more colors you could see.
Detail work this time came from deeper shades of lavenders and pinks. White used a frosty pale pink powder on Ginneh’s cheekbones and applied cool gray tones (some with hints of blues and purples) around her eyes. “Halloween is the time of year when you can take someone’s features to the extreme,” White said gleefully.
White pulled another magic trick out of her witch’s hat by using three pairs of false eyelashes: One pair placed conventionally, the other two layered in the crease of Ginneh’s eyelid, below her brow. Ginneh wondered about this effect at first, but then she realized, “When my eye is open, it gives the appearance that I have really, really long lashes.”
Fully made over, we two Halloween visions took our new looks out onto Michigan Avenue for a brief twirl until we had to part ways. Ginneh hopped in a cab with White, heading south to the Cadillac Palace Theatre, where she was delighted to discover that many of her castmates didn’t recognize her. Meanwhile, I ambled north, grinning or glaring at passersby as the spirit moved me. Some people loved my wicked visage; others recoiled in momentary alarm. Kids especially enjoyed it.
Later that night, I showed off my new face to my grandmother, who initially didn’t know who I was. “Well, to tell you the truth,” she said, “you look terrible.”
On Halloween, that’s high praise.
