children's drawings turn into playful makeup looks in 'draw me a face' project

‘draw me a face’ project turns kids’ imagination into makeup

Playful freedom forms the starting point for Draw Me A Face, a collaborative project by Paris-based creative studio Buro Nōto, photographer Pierre-Emmanuel Testard and makeup artist Tiziana Raimondo. Instead of asking artists to imagine new beauty looks, the team asked children to draw directly onto portraits, translating their spontaneous sketches into fully realized makeup compositions.

The resulting portraits feel both unfamiliar and strangely intuitive. Graphic shapes stretch across faces without concern for balance or proportion, while vivid colors occupy places conventional beauty rarely allows. Freed from aesthetic expectations, the children’s drawings produce compositions that feel expressive rather than corrective.

At its core, the project doesn’t treat childhood as a nostalgic theme but as a creative methodology. Instinct takes precedence over expertise, and imagination becomes more valuable than technical perfection. The children are not simply collaborators but rather become designers of an entirely different visual language.

all images by Pierre Testard

play as creative design tool

Throughout design history, innovation has often emerged from questioning inherited rules. ‘Draw Me A Face’ reaches the same conclusion through play. By handing authorship to children, the project temporarily suspends the invisible conventions that shape contemporary beauty culture.

The result is neither fantasy nor costume. It is an experiment in perception. The portraits invite viewers to reconsider where beauty begins—not in mastery, but in curiosity. Play becomes less an escape from creative practice than a method for expanding it.

the children’s drawings produce compositions that feel expressive rather than corrective

relearning imagination

What makes ‘Draw Me A Face’ so compelling is its quiet reversal of expertise. Adults spend years refining taste, learning proportion and internalising visual codes. Children simply make marks that feel right. The project suggests that creativity sometimes depends less on acquiring knowledge than on recovering a way of seeing that has gradually been edited out of us. In that sense, these portraits are not about childhood at all. They are about remembering that imagination often arrives before instruction—and that the most original ideas can emerge when we stop trying to get things right.

original drawings are recreated directly onto the models’ faces

lok 04 imagined by Mila, 10

makeup artist Tiziana Raimondo translates the paintings into fully realized makeup looks

the makeup looks preserve every spontaneous line

look 07 imagined by Nori, 9, pairs neon lashes with an illustrated scar

soft washes of color recreate Jeanne’s expressive drawing across the model’s face

look 08 imagined by Jeanne, 8, embraces painterly color and abstract facial markings

delicate freckles, graphic lashes, and soft pink lips

look 18 imagined by Mila, 10

look 19 by Jacques, 7, transforms soft watercolor-like brushstrokes into a dramatic composition

flowers, a rainbow, and colorful gems create a playful composition

look 20 imagined by Mila, 10

project info:

name: Draw Me a Face

photographer: Pierre Testard | @petestard
creative director: Aurélie Joly & Buro Nōto | @buronoto
makeup: Tiziana Raimondo | @tizianaraimondo
hair: Marion Anee | @marion.anee
special thanks to the children: Nori, Mila, Jeanne, Billie, Simone, Raphaël Leor, Akiro,
Romane, Daria, Hannah & Jacques