Oh, the Horror, the Horror of Nina Kamal’s Works

When she couldn’t find someone to apply makeup for her on Halloween night, Maria Kamal resorted to her own devices and soon found herself catapulted to online fame as a special effects artist.

Little did she know that when she posted her design on her Facebook account three-and-a-half years ago, she would soon became the center of social media stardom.

Going by the nickname Nina, Kamal now has over 13,000 Facebook followers who admire her craft in utilizing body paint to create grotesque impressions of paintings, such as Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Before starting her career as a makeup artist, the German University in Cairo accounting graduate watched Youtube tutorials on body painting to learn various techniques and spent her private time collecting the materials needed.

“I spent the first few times practicing with a tutorial video in front of me and I was not satisfied with the results because they never looked that right to me, but I kept going until I didn’t need a tutorial video ever again,” said Kamal.

She says that her earlier designs lacked personality and seemed derivative of other works.

“I didn’t have somebody to guide me, so I had to learn the right steps by my own, and I felt that the first experiments were mere copycats so I don’t have an emotional connection to them,” she said.

When she began finding her preferred methods, she started using gouache, a form of water media paint, which she hated because she realized it was terrible on her skin  and made her itchy.

She decided to rely on a mixture of watercolors because it was the most fluid and softest on her skin.

However, she was limited by the paint supplies in local stores which restricted her choice of materials to use.

It was not until later in her career that she decided to try character painting and use makeup products and utensils because those products were more available in stores compared to watercolors.

This new development, which she would showcase step by step in videos uploaded on Facebook, gave her a wider audience who praised her redesign of celebratory figures, especially her most famous creations of actor Omar Sharif, football player Mohamed Salah, and silver screen icon Mary Mounib.

“I feel that she is an artist who brings an underlying theme of horror in her art, and by that I mean that the aesthetic she uses in her makeup reminds me of horror films abroad that we lack in Egyptian cinema,” said Mahmoud Nasr Gawdat, a graphic design minor student and one of her fans.

Gawdat also admires Kamal’s uniqueness with her  makeup design quality, saying that not many artists can master their art in such a manner.

“I am influenced more by my surroundings than any particular artist, especially because of the vibrancy of their colors and the multiple shapes they can manifest. A river is not the same as a splashing ocean, and the color schemes are varied,” said Kamal.

To keep her skills sharpened, she undergoes a self-imposed 30-day challenge to create a new look every day..

This seems to pay off; when she started, she took at least six hours to finish her piece, but now finishes in around two to three hours.

So far, Kamal has not made her hobby an official business, but she does have her eyes set on opening a studio.

She still feels her work could be perfected and hopes others inspired by her videos would come forward and add their touches to her creations.