The Road to Becoming a Makeup Artist

Hello everyone,

Sorry I've been AWOL, my PC just upped and died one day, which left me with an unexpected expense of getting another computer, it's so nice being back :)

I'm so happy to say that my yearning to become a makeup artist has finally taken it's first step to becoming a reality, as last weekend I started my Pro Hair and Makeup Course with the Academy of Freelance Makeup Artists (AOFM).

To say I'm excited at what I will learn is putting it mildly and am already enjoying myself thoroughly.  As luck would have it my class has a good mix of different skin tones, ages and there is even a lovely man, so we will all get a wealth of experience with the challenges each person presents to us.

AOFM Professional Freelance Hair and Makeup Certificate - Part-time

Covers Foundation Level Makeup, Advanced Level Makeup and Hair Styling

Academy of Freelance Makeup AOFM Foundation course stage - Days 1 & 2

Day 1 was focusing on two totally different looks, first up was perfecting the no makeup makeup look, clean fresh skin and subtle enhancing of features.  My model was a fellow student that just so happened to be a pretty young woman, I loved doing this makeup, having to mix a matching foundation (Mac Face and Body) and concealers, unfortunately with all the excitement I didn't think to ask for my camera so no photo to show you :(

We are not allowed any personal belongings in class, especially not phones which I use as my camera too, but we can ask for them at appropriate times to take photos of our work, so thankfully I did think to ask if I could go get it for the next look.

The second look was a black smokey eye, we only have time to do each look once on the day, so what you see will be my one and only attempt but I will admit that one eye was done by the tutor for the demo and I did the other eye, I did my best to get my eye to the same standard as the tutors.

We were literally just focusing on the eyes and by this stage the natural toned down lip colour for the no makeup makeup had been long gone and my models lips are naturally quite pigmented, if we had been focusing on the whole look, I would have definitely tried to mute them down to balance out the strong eyes.  However, I'm pretty happy with the outcome for a first try, here it is:

Day 2 was all about bridal makeup and our lovely tutor was Annabel Callum, the morning session was all about the practicalities of being a bridal mua and was very informative, so grateful for everything I learnt.  After lunch we then watched Annabel demo a pretty fresh bridal look and then had to create a look ourselves.

Again I was lucky to be paired with another naturally pretty student, whom is a shade or two lighter than me.  We were given Shu Uemura products to work with which was a treat, however, the liquid foundations were very limited, just 3 but that gave me the chance to customise a foundation shade and with the blue tones under eyes and around the mouth I again was mixing concealers/correctors.  Really enjoyed working with the MUFE concealer palette for darker tones, such lovely consistency.

We were advised to go for matte products, unfortunately the matte shade range was not geared for Asian skin tones and I decided not to go with the more vibrant warm earthy shimmer tones that I was directed to as I still wanted to see if I could create a pretty fresh spring like bridal look from the the options available, limited choice for what I had in mind and shimmery but I tried to tone that down by mixing them with the lighter matte colours available.

I let my model choose the lip colour from swatches on my hand, I used an awesome Paris Berlin lipliner, it did come out just a tad darker than I would have chosen but it's in the same tone range that I had in mind, I then tried to mute the colour with a paler brownie/pink lipstick from the Shu Uemura selection, which was very sheer.  I'm very happy with the over all look, I think the lovely Jas looks gorgeous and best of all she was really happy with it too, which pleased me no end, here is it:

Of course I can look at these photos and see things I'd like to improve, probably will always be that way no matter how many goes I might get to create a look!

Loving getting all the tips, direction, information and getting hands on experience on other faces.  I'm especially looking forward to doing makeup on a guy, that'll be new.

The only thing I could ask for is an afternoon tea break, I do so love a cuppa :)

Next we will be covering glam makeup looks for events, eyebrows, contour and highlighting, yes!

Bring it on :-D

Diane x