• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.100-115
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• 2014

This study examined the history of nail art in 20th century, defined characteristics of many techniques used on nails, and analyzed how those techniques have been utilized in recent nail art works. For the method of the study, books and previous studies on nail art were examined as primary sources, and newspaper articles on nail art were studied as references. Then, the case studies were conducted on photographs of nail art works published in Nail Holic in 2012. As a result of analyzing expression techniques of nail art featured on Nail Holic, there had been a total of 517 works created using a single technique. The reason why hand painting is used very frequently is because artists can draw unique images of their own to create various designs according to their tastes. Rhine stone is also very popular, because stones are easy to apply and various in their shapes and colors. There were a total of 555 works created using two or more techniques. The most important point to examine is that hand painting, rhine stone, and 3D art were most popular among all techniques. These works featured highly various effects and images by combining flat effect of hand painting with three-dimensional effects of rhine stone or 3D art. The tendency can also be found in the fact that there have been many works using techniques of flat effects such as decal or marbling combined with techniques of three-dimensional effects such as rhine stone or 3D art.