Makeup and face art
Kajal and kohl, contouring, Kathakali and Kabuki makeup, thanaka and face paint. 30 face guides on EveryFaceShape so far.
Makeup and face art cover everything applied to the face: kohl and kajal around the eyes, blush and contour, the white oshiroi of Japan, thanaka paste in Myanmar, and the painted faces of Kathakali, Kabuki and Peking opera. Some are everyday beauty, some are faith or festival, and some are stage conventions that tell an audience exactly who a character is.
Old everyday makeup
Kohl was used in Egypt more than 5,000 years ago, made with galena and malachite. In South Asia, kajal is made at home from lamp soot and ghee. Thanaka, ground bark paste, is worn daily on the cheeks in Myanmar. White face paints were worn in Japan and in Renaissance Europe, where the lead in ceruse harmed wearers. Contouring came from the stage and became a mass fashion in the 2010s.
The painted stage
Asian classical theatres made face painting a language. In Kathakali from Kerala, green faces are noble heroes and red-marked ones proud villains. In Kabuki, kumadori lines in red mark heroes and in blue villains. In Peking opera, red is loyalty, black integrity and white cunning. Sichuan opera adds bian lian, changing masks in a split second. In Mexico, faces are painted as calaveras for the Day of the Dead.
Famous makeup face guides
Still to be written: Kathakali.
Further reading
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Beauty mark: Ian Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0, source
- Kumadori: Unknown author, Public domain, source
- Bian lian: Yongxinge, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Calavera: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Contouring: Tobias ToMar Maier, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Kohl: Camila Zanon., CC BY 2.0, source
- Oshiroi: Conveyor Belt Sushi, CC BY 2.0, source
- Thanaka: Garonzi Stefania, CC BY-SA 4.0, source