I’m a Good Clown’…
Ok so it’s not pretty, it’s not got glitter, and it’s not one of those halloween looks that screams oooooo look I’m ALL scarrryy…..but still sexy ya kno. This is for you if maybe you are interested in halloween….HALLOWEEN. Scaring people, slightly grotesque and pure fantasy. This is Twisty the clown from cult hit show American Horror Story. There’s something I have always likes about him. When I say ‘liked’ I mean.. he’s a REALLY good scary character. He is utterly terrifying, yet human and has a teeny tiny bit of like-ability about him.
I love the way they do his makeup for the show : it’s raw, imperfect, smudgy and relatively easy to do if you have a bit of makeup/painting skill and about an hour of time. If like me, you are tired of these glamour makeup/ scary (not scary) halloween looks floating about then have a read on to see how I created this look.
T H I N G S Y O U N E E D:
1.) Bald Cap (I used this cheap one from Smiffy’s)
2.) Some hair to stick on if you fancy a serious Twisty. (I used old clip in extension hair that had seen better days, backcombed it and sprayed a LOT of hairspray in and some colour spray on it)
3.) Double-sided sticky tape or glue- to stick the bits of hair onto the bald cap.
4.) Makeup – White, black, red, brown, green, yellow colour creams.
I used a Ben Nye 6-colour wheel (always handy for things like this) a Laura Mercier Creme Eyeliner in Brown, Illamasqua Gel black eyeliner – that is literally it.
5.) Fake Blood. Easy to come by and you can buy from most shops around this time of year, you don’t need a fancy one.
6.) Brushes – paint brushes/old makeup brushes. Don’t use your fancy makeup brushes as they may get ruined with the heavy cream colours you are using. I literally used THREE BRUSHES for this whole makeup.
H O W T O:
It’s pretty self-explanatory with the picture, but a few extra details & tips. Keep a picture to hand of your Twisty reference and wear something you don’t like so much as it may get very dirty.
1.) Start by painting your face the base colour which is initially off-white, work out the rough shapes that you will be using. I have dark brows so I corrected them lightly with a bit of red before I used concealer over them so they were not as prominent.
2.) Stipple areas of discolouration over the top of your white base so it doesn’t look perfect. It needs to look a bit dirty and mottled. I mixed colours from the Ben Nye wheel in with the white.
3.) Draw out the area of the mouth/mask. This is supposed to be a prosthetic mask that he wears over the top of his deformed mouth/jaw so remember to do the lines and a bit of shading so it reflects this. This is kind of the main ‘event’ of the look so as long as you have the shape of this right and the spacing etc. this is the most important thing.
4.) Fill in eye details : this is the easy/fun part, it can be messy/imperfect and it’s super quick. I used a brush and fingertips to get that authentic Twisty look. Even the vertical lines that run up and down from the eyes are a bit scraggy and off-centre.
5.) Fill in the teeth/mask area. The centrepiece of the look and the most intricate part in terms of detail. This probably takes 3/4 of the time that you spend painting your face. For the teeth = just plop on the teeth with a white paint, they will look rubbish at first but then when you start adding detail around them/ adding the black etc they will look loads better so just keep at it!
6.) The final details. Depending on how much time you have and how good you want it to look – keep going over the skin adding markings, scarring, pock marks, blood, wrinkles to your hearts’ content. Pop on the bald cap, add makeup on top of this to make it more skin-like and off you go into the night to scare everyone in sight.
What do you think of my Twisty the clown? What are you doing for this year? I shall actually be in Salem…..SALEM (!) for Halloween and I cannot wait to meet all the witches.
