Student stumbles upon Halloween painting talent

Senior Maya Grabriele does makeup for her friends and clients for Halloween. With a busy schedule, Gabriele renewed her passion for face painting for the gory holiday of Halloween.

Senior Maya Gabriele battles with the struggle of senior year. She used to create face art all the time as a kid, but now that she is older, she struggles to find time for her mind easing activity; however, with Halloween coming up, the ghosts of Gabriele’s talents have come calling as she has gotten requests to return to her hobby for gory face arts on the 31st.

“I haven’t really thought about makeup for this Halloween yet. When I was younger I used to watch videos for different designs, but I haven’t had much time for that really,” Gabriele said.

Gabriele’s style of art is more of a pretty, bloody and gory scenery. She likes to present a gorgeously scary theme. 

“My favorite kind of style is a mix of like pretty and glam with a little bit of nasty zombie, blood-type of stuff. I did one on my friend, and I had her eye really pretty, but then I had her mouth slit and bloody,” Gabriele said.

Gabriele doesn’t just limit herself to one kind of art. Although she likes to do other arts too, face art is where she gains her reputation.

“I like other types of art like drawing and painting. Pretty much any type of art, so this is like another type of medium. When I first started getting into it, I don’t know what was so exciting to me. I remember the first time I did makeup. I learned everything from YouTube, so I just started watching all these YouTube videos, and I was like, ‘Oh that’s pretty cool,’” Gabriele said.

As Gabriele started by watching videos and getting inspired, she started to do more of her own works and ideas. She realized that she could do so much more than just the common face art as she bought more tools.

“I found this one that was this zombie with half of its face torn off, and I like begged my parents to get all this makeup. It started off that I just wanted to do this one zombie, but after I had all these tools, I could do more things with it,” Gabriele said.

Gabriele’s time has been limited with countless hours of homework, but she makes time for her hobby sometimes.

“I did makeup on a friend last Sunday because we had a Halloween party for Teen Trust. We were supposed to dress up, and I told myself however much time I had after my homework would depend on how much effort I put into my own makeup,” Gabriele said.

Gabriele then put together a skeleton on her face. “So I was either going to wear a onesie or go all out. I ended up finishing my homework two hours early, so I ended up doing like a skeleton mouth and glitter as the teeth to not make it boring,” Gabriele said.

Gabriele’s Halloween craze started a couple years ago when she put a spin on the zipper face idea.

“Two years ago on Halloween I saw those zipper face makeups, but I wanted to add in some glam. So, instead I painted my face like silver and glued diamonds on so the zipper was made of diamonds, but now I don’t really have the time for that,” Gabriele said. 

Although Gabriele has very little time, she will try to work this into her schedule.

“If I find something I want to do, I will do it. I’ve also gotten requests from people. Like friends know that I do it, and I’m good at it, and they’ll actually pay me to do it, but options are out there,” Gabriele said.

Senior Maya Grabriele does makeup for her friends and clients for Halloween. With a busy schedule, Gabriele renewed her passion for face painting for the gory holiday of Halloween.