One of the most important things that make visual kei so appealing and different from other rock scenes, is their extensive use of make-up. For visual kei artists, their clothes and make-up are just as important as their music, and while many disagree on this perspective, us fans have learned to love and accept it. Many fans have gone so far as to try and mimic their favorite artist’s hair style and make-up, while many others have at least given it the thought. This post today is for those who have been having thoughts on trying out the visual kei style on themselves but have no idea where to begin! Youtube users RIONproject Music have made a handy make-up and hair tutorial for those who seek guidance on the subject!
Make-up artist Kaede explains step by step the process of applying make-up from foundation to eye-liner and even gives some hygiene tips.
The brow should not have any curvature, but rather rise upwards, with the outer brow being thinner than the inner brow.
After finishing up with the eyebrows, the next step is filling up the eyes with eyeliner. Any type of eyeliner works, although in this case Kaede uses gel liner.
The eyeliner should follow the eyebrow’s arch while still keeping a significant amount of space between them.
When filling under the eye, simply follow your eye’s curve and fill it in as much as you like.
The next step is the eye shadow, which should be placed on top of the eyeliner. You should continue to apply it until it’s smooth and the eye-lid is no longer shiny. Repeat the same process for the bottom part of the eye.
Applying eye shadow.
After all this is done, the next step is to add color! You’re free to choose any color you want, although in this case the make-up artist went for a very subtle, orange-y color. This should go on top of the eye shadow and should also follow the same curvature as you did for the shadow.
The color should be placed on top of the eye shadow and should also follow the same curvature.
The next step is to fill in any missing spaces of the eye with liquid liner in order to make the eye make-up look as natural as possible, as well as to give it a proper eye shape.
Apply liquid liner to fill in any missing gaps and give a proper eye shape to your make up.
Next is contouring! This is basically to make your face appear to have more defined features. Here, you should use a brown colored blush that is a bit darker than your actual skin color, but it shouldn’t have too much of a difference, so as to not make the contouring too obvious. Apply it over your nose and cheeks. On your nose, it should be applied on the sides of your nose, while for the cheeks you should run it from the top corner of your ears downwards towards your lips. Contouring is very hard to master, so you should practice lots in order to improve and get better, more natural results.
Apply brown blush to make your features more defined.
The final step is the lipstick, which many visual kei artists use in order to give a more feminine touch. This is also your call in regards to color.
Apply lipstick color of your choice for the final touch.
And there you go, a basic visual kei make-up! The end result should look similar to the picture below.
The end result.