Neeraj Chopra to Milkha Singh, Woman Uses Stunning Makeup Skills to Turn into Everyone

The internet is filled with makeup trends — from ‘lifted faces’ and foxy eyes to 3-D nail art. The art of creating an illusion with a few clever tricks is not new, yet it is fascinating to note how the most complicated looks can be decoded in a few seconds.

I recently came across the most jaw-dropping makeup looks by Ghaziabad-based Priyanka Panwar. A makeup artist by profession, she can transform herself into any identity without using prosthetics. Be it APJ Abdul Kalam, Milkha Singh, Jennifer Anniston or Mr Bean, the 29-year-old has left netizens impressed with every transformation.

Though the makeup industry was not Priyanka’s first choice, as she never considered herself an artist. After working in a corporate firm for 2.5 years, she quit her job in 2018 out of frustration.

“I certainly didn’t want to continue doing that job for life, and I decided to take a risk by quitting. I was always interested in makeup so I enrolled myself in a short makeup course without realising it was going to be life changing for me,” Priyanka tells The Better India.

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Apart from her mind-boggling transformations, Priyanka’s Instagram account, with over 22,000 followers, is filled with optical illusions such as an upside down head, melting face, trippy face, giraffe nose and more. Her social media moniker is aptly named ‘Illusion Mua’.

But what her followers don’t see is that behind each stunning look is almost 8-11 hours of hard work and tremendous patience. She uses bald caps, contact lenses and wigs to complete her looks. Her process of transformation begins with collecting images of the identity and studying them from different angles, where she even measures their chin, cheek, jawline and nose for accuracy.

The tiniest of errors and she has to start over.

“It is all about getting the right details, placements and camera angles. If there is a curve, the camera won’t capture it so I have to position my face in an angle to create a curved illusion. Sometimes, my 10 hours of work goes down the drain if the outcome is not as expected. I am careful with my aesthetic,” she says.

“I first draw my illusion looks on paper and then find areas on my face that can be camouflaged with the right backdrop. Sometimes, my entire family helps me,” says Priyanka, who was even approached by Netflix to create Kay Kay Menon’s character look in the 2021 movie ‘Ray’.