This Mind-Boggling Artist Creates Optical Illusions and Cultural Characters Through Makeup

By Alyce Collins

 

 

FROM MINDBENDING optical-illusions to transforming herself into a pig-woman this makeup artist only gave the craft that is now her living a try after feeling bored.

 

Pictures show Toma with various makeovers which took her hours and hours to complete, such as a Mariah Carey makeover, the Joker from Batman, the illusion that her skin is being ripped open, and transforming her nose into a butterfly.

 

Makeup artist Toma Skabeikyte (26) from Akmene, Lithuania, has always loved art and specifically drawing from a young age, but her creativity rocketed when Toma realised her greatest canvas was her body.

 

After completing her studies in graphic design at a design college in Vilnius, Toma began her career in makeup artistry and soon found a true passion is visual effects and illusion styles.

 

Toma’s first illusion makeover was a skull on her face back in 2016, and since then she has completed many styles, including Miss Piggy, a werewolf for Halloween and even the illusion that her face is being torn off.

 

“Makeup is my passion and definitely one of the best ways to express myself and show my creativity to other people,” said Toma.

 

“I have the opportunity to use my body and face as a canvas, and to create unique looks and share my work with people all around the world.

 

“I am inspired by many things, for example movies, videogames paintings, nature and other makeup artists.

 

“The very first time I tried special effects makeup was when I was bored and had nothing to do.

 

“I don’t have a favourite makeup look, I love all of the looks I’ve done because I try to do my best with all of them, but it can take somewhere between four to sixteen hours.

 

“The one that took me the longest took over 24 hours, so of course I had to take short breaks for snacks in between.

 

“The small details are the hardest part of any look, they take a lot of time. Drawing in a mirror makes it quite difficult too.

 

“I couldn’t choose the most difficult style because they all take a lot of hard work and patience, so each one is very hard.

 

“I don’t have to try them out beforehand but sometimes I see that a makeover won’t be a success and I stop it at an early stage. We all have bad days.”

 

Toma is often short of free time due to her hectic career, meaning she doesn’t get to research new styles as often as she would like to.

 

After spending nearly a whole day fulfilling her makeover style, Toma will try to get as many pictures and videos as possible to show off her completed look, before regretfully having to wipe it off.

 

Although Toma is currently working in the makeup artist industry, she hopes that one day her career will be more about special effects and illusion makeup instead.

 

“Sometimes it’s very sad to wipe it off, so I leave it on for two to three hours to enjoy it. But most of the time I just take photos and videos of the look before wiping it off.

 

“No one has ever asked me to do an illusion makeover style on them before, I just do those on my own face and body. It would be nice to try those on someone else though.

 

“I am a makeup artist and my job is to do day-to-day makeovers, but I love doing illusion makeovers equally as much.

 

“I’m on the way to making this a career because I really love doing makeovers, it’s my passion. At the moment, illusion makeovers are my hobby but one day I hope to make it my full-time career as well.”

 

You can see more of Toma’s incredible talent by visiting her Instagram page, @to.ska_mua.