Makeup Artist Ryan Kelly Creates Stunningly Accurate Pop-Culture Paintings on Her Lips

Marci Robin
From Bird Box to The Golden Girls, this lip art is just too good.

I've often found myself scrolling through makeup artists' Instagram grids with a sense of awe, wondering how they achieved such an enviable blush-to-highlighter balance or came up with an unexpected blend of colors for an especially impactful cut crease. But although I may never be able to master their techniques, there's at least a chance I can mimic them pretty well with practice. I can say with great certainty, however, that even with all the practice in the world, I will never come close to being able to do what Ryan Kelly does.

Kelly, a makeup artist based in Maryland, has been practicing — and truly perfecting — lip art for the last four years, earning her more than 75,000 Instagram followers. Kelly uses her lips as an unlikely canvas to interpret familiar images with mindblowing accuracy. "My technique has certainly evolved. I definitely look back on my earlier looks and cringe a bit," she tells Allure. "One thing that's remained pretty consistent is the content. I love playing with trends and pop culture references."

One of those references: Kelly's recent homage to Bird Box, the Netflix horror movie. Earlier this month, she painted a portrait of a blindfolded Sandra Bullock — complete with puffer coat and foggy backdrop — on her lips, as accurately as if someone has used a projector to play the movie on her face. Kelly even "blindfolded" her nails; she often adds an element of nail art to cleverly give even more dimension to the photos she posts of her results. (And this isn't even the first time Bullock has made an appearance; last October, she created Practical Magic lip art, complete with a midnight margarita nail.)

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So how does she do it? "When I first started playing with lip art, I had hours and hours to paint and play with ideas. At that point, everything was painted freehand, and looks could take up to six or seven hours," Kelly tells Allure. That all changed when she became a mother. She realized she would have to refine her process in order to spend more time with her daughter. "I saw another makeup artist use transfer paper — similar to what a tattoo artist uses — for body painting, and a light-bulb went off in my head. It took some serious refining, but now I love having that as an option for days when I'm limited on time."

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Kelly starts by drawing a huge pair of lips on paper; that allows her to roughly gauge the proportions and where she wants the image to lay. Then, she sketches it out, scans it, and shrinks it down to fit her lips. She prints it on temporary tattoo paper and transfers it to her lips, at which point she shades and colors the image with makeup.

That makeup is definitely not regular old lipstick, however. "Creamy products just aren't suited for drawing faces and tiny details because they move and fade," Kelly tells Allure, though she has used liquid lipstick quite successfully. "I also almost always use some type of water-activated face paint. Mehron has a palette with a huge color range that I adore." And much like regular lipstick isn't an ideal medium, a regular lip brush just doesn't cut it for details. "The best brushes for lip art are tiny, thin paint brushes from the craft store," Kelly says, adding that, in a pinch, she's used stamps, a toothpick, and even thread hardened with superglue.

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As you can see from her work, Kelly loves kitsch, and so do her followers. "I love creating lips that will make people laugh, or feel a little twinge of nostalgia," she tells Allure. Currently, she has Dumb & Dumber and Pulp Fiction looks in the works, and she's always checking her direct messages for great ideas from her fans. "I have the biggest to-do list ever! Often I will sketch out a few looks at a time and then grab one that inspires me when I have a window of time to paint."

But while Sandra Bullock has made a couple appearances, it's another actor who Kelly has made a top lip-art priority: "My followers know that I'm forever thinking of new ways to incorporate Jeff Goldblum into a look just so that I can say he was on my lips."

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Keep up with Kelly's incredible lip art by following her on Instagram: @ryankellymua.

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