Niharika Chandrasekar

@indiepeacock (Latest York, Latest York)

For Niharika Chandrasekar, makeup is a type of play.

A longtime fashion lover, Chandrasekar turned to beauty when pandemic lockdowns suppressed her creative outlet of selection. Since then, she has cultivated a knack for locating artistic inspiration in absolutely anything — from her growing collection of lego flower sets to the orange-and-red gradient of her favorite Ferragamo bag.

“Once I do my makeup, I’m principally tapping into my inner child,” said Chandrasekar, who spends anywhere from two hours to half a day making a look. “I’m someone that loves to only do what hasn’t been done before.”

Amongst her most intricate creations are an eye fixed shadow look inspired by the floral patterns and rectangular types of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss painting, and an “evil eye” brow look, for which she faux-bleached her brows and covered them with a series of interlocking evil eye symbols, believed in lots of cultures to ward off evil forces.

“I at all times get excited to indicate off a glance — I’m someone who literally used to walk around highschool wearing 5-inch heels,” recalled Chandrasekar with amusing, adding that her fantastical makeup looks, too, are anything but homebound.

Betty Tran

@bettytraan (Portland, Oregon)

Though she grew up as a self-described tomboy, Betty Tran was at all times entranced by the world of makeup.

“My older sister was in highschool through the Y2K era, so once I was in elementary school I’d at all times sit back and watch her do her makeup, and I just fell in love with it,” said Tran.

Naturally, she began routinely raiding her sister’s makeup collection. It was within the late 2010s, though, that a string of album releases by her favorite musical artists — including Mac Miller’s “The Divine Feminine” and Summer Walker’s “Over It” — impelled Tran to grow to be more experimental along with her makeup looks.

“My two loves on the time were makeup and music, especially hip-hop music, so I began creating makeup looks based on album covers,” said Tran, adding that one in all her first posts to go viral was an eye fixed shadow look inspired by the quilt art of Tyler the Creator’s “Flower Boy.”

She also relishes holidays like Halloween and Lunar Latest Yr as opportunities to forge latest techniques and play with color, once elaborately painting a red and gold paper lantern unto her face to commemorate the latter occasion.

“I see makeup as a blank canvas; I actually have lots of interests that I’m not particularly good at, where makeup I can at all times properly express myself through, so I form of take all my other interests and communicate them through this,” said Tran.

Chime Dolker

@_chimedolker (Portland, Oregon)

“Editorial avant-garde” is how Chime Dolker describes her artistic style, and a swipe through her Instagram page nearly confirms as much.

Sharp graphic eyeliner, technicolor eye shadow and glazed skin are amongst her hallmarks — but don’t get it twisted: No two looks are the identical.

“I grew up within the YouTube era of beauty — I used to be watching Desi Perkins and these other amazing influencers who sparked my creativity and made me wish to play with makeup,” said Dolker, who describes her day-to-day makeup as relatively minimalist, though her social media creations are anything but.

“A lot of the times that I sit all the way down to create, I don’t know what I’m going to be doing — that’s probably probably the most fun part, is seeing what I give you as I’m going,” she said.

In a nod to her heritage, Dolker once painted the outline of Tibet across the middle of her face, mixing the blue, red and yellow of the Tibetan flag together in a gradient — one other of Dolker’s stylistic signatures.

“I get lots of design ideas from my Tibetan culture; symbolically, we just have lots of different shapes and designs, and Tibetan artwork itself is just this totally unique genre,” said Dolker.

Julie Thomas

@j0ules (Chicago, Illinois)

Julie Thomas can’t fathom confining her art solely to her lips or eyelids.

“I just go crazy on my face — there aren’t any rules,” said Thomas, who has drawn starry nights on her cheeks, extends her graphic eyeliner to her temples, and has even taken dried hot glue to the face within the name of art.

“You learn to trust the method — normally whenever you’re midway through, it looks scary, but you simply need to keep going,” said Thomas, whose passion for beauty was ignited when she got here across a Taylor Swift-inspired makeup tutorial in 2008.

“[That video] sparked an idea in me, because I spotted you may literally recreate anything you would like,” said Thomas. And since then, she has done exactly that, using makeup to morph right into a mime, a nymph and even the robot motherboard from PBS Kids’ animated series, “Cyberchase,” to call just a few of her creations.

She has also found creative ways to display her Indian heritage, often topping off her looks with an embellished bindi.

“My culture plays an enormous part in my makeup; I’m Indian, and we love color, so I prefer to incorporate color into all my looks. Indian culture has lots of glam and bling, like bindis and jewellery, so I really like to include that into my makeup,” she said.

Renee X

@hydroniuum (Latest York, Latest York)

Renee X’s artistry spans many mediums.

A lover of stitching, drawing and, most recently, makeup, her crafts have in common that in each, she is committed to showcasing her talent without ever taking herself too seriously.

“It’s this concept of getting an absurd presence, but at the identical time a skillful and real effortful execution,” said Renee of her design ethos. “I’ve at all times been an artist, and I desired to bring my humor into a unique form of medium.”

She forayed into makeup during quarantine through a series of gaming- and meme-inspired looks, and though her inspiration was often lighthearted (video games like Minecraft and Genshin Impact sparked her earliest ideas), her delivery was nothing wanting meticulous.

“There’s a geometry to it, a math and calligraphy, and a structure. Sometimes I’ll even bring out my 6-inch ruler to line things up,” said Renee, whose otherworldly looks feature two-toned lips, unconventional eyeliner shapes and, at all times, wavy eyebrows that sweep upward on the tail.

“I’ve since moved away from the meme inspired looks, but keeping that humor, that mischievousness in my art — that’s essential to me,” she said.