Have you ever watched a movie or observed a piece of artwork and suddenly felt completely inspired to recreate an iconic look? Goldthread spoke to makeup artist He Yuhong, who has taken the internet by storm showing off her makeup transformations into some of her favorite figures in pop culture.
Yuhong has turned the makeup brushes on herself to transform into Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Johnny Depp, and even the famous Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci.
Yuhong was originally drawn to sharing her cosmetology skills with the world when she noticed people doing makeup transformations and painting half of their faces on social media and wanted to try it out for herself. After creating makeup looks on half her face for a while, she felt like she needed a fresh challenge.
The internet really took notice of her work in 2018 when she transformed her face into the Mona Lisa. But how is it she’s able to recreate these looks so effortlessly?
“Before I work on the makeup, I do a lot of research,” Yuhong says of her creative and artistic process. “I look at photos and videos of the characters. I study their facial features, the shape of their face, the shape of their eyes, their eyebrows.”
After she does a meticulous analysis, she starts to compare the shape of the subject’s face with her own and how she can “transfer their features” to her own face through makeup application.
Yuhong doesn’t attribute her talent with a makeup brush to being the key component in pulling off these looks. She attests that it’s also her use of specific facial expressions that genuinely helps.
To check out all of He Yuhong’s popular makeup transformation looks and to hear even more about her process, check out the video.
