Thursday 25 April 2013

Makeup for Black and White Photography

Hello my lovely readers! Today I was given the challenge of doing a BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY MAKEUP. This is one of my favourite looks to do. Unfortunately for me, I don't have a camera that shoots black and white so I just had to convert them on imgur. It really isn't the same. Some key differences between regular makeup and black and white makeup

1. Everything needs to be matte, the beautiful shimmery colors will really just show up as greasyness in black and white. That is HARDLY a pretty look.

2. You don't need to add in color because it won't show. It's also really hard to judge the intensity of colors when you start playing around. Black and white changes everything - a color that looks like a light blue to you might turn up dark grey on the camera. It's better to just stick with neutrals.

3. That fresh rosy glow you want on your cheeks every day? It will just look splotchy once you go  black and white. Having a uniform skin tone is one of the most important things in Black and White photographic makeup.

4. Your contouring WILL look ridiculous in real life.

Here is an example of a Black and White photographic makeup I did on someone else. Since not only is it harder for me to do my own makeup than others but ALSO I have a sucky camera - I thought this would be a nice touch.



NOW! On to the tutorial:

As usual, start with a clean and moisturized face. Mine isn't AS clean as it should be because this was actually my second makeup of the day.

Using my Real Techniques Expert Face brush (dense, round, good for blending) I buffed Revlon Photoready foundation in Ivory onto my skin.

Because I have permanent, genetic dark circles under my eyes I spend EXTRA time concealing them today. And you can STILL see them. I started by powdering over my foundation. I added a thin layer of a yellow concealer to correct the violet around my eyes, powedered, then added a thin layer of peach concealer in the darkest hollows of my eyes and powdered AGAIN.

Here's where it starts gtting a bit weird I took a cream foundation around 4-6 shades darker than my skin tone and put that anywhere I would normally contour. The hollows of my cheeks, my forehead/temples, under my jawline, and on the sides of my nose. I also highlighted the center of my nose, cheek bones, forehead, cupids bow, and chin using a cream shadow lighter than my skin tone. Please note this picture is BEFORE blending to show where color should be applied. I used the same foundation brush for this.

Bled that stuff all in and powder! Your skin should look matte, but still heatlhy.

Next, create a base for your eyeshadow. I personally used Lancome's Correcteur concealer mixed with my Too Face Shadow Insurance to achieve maximum hold AND a more uniform lid color. You can use any base you'd like though.

I took a sheer, matte white eyeshadow and brush it all over my lid using a MAC 217 eyeshadow brush. This will create a nice blending surface for our crease color as well as highlight you lid and brow bone.

Next, using a fluffy blending brush blend a matte medium brown into your crease and slightly above.Check out the foundation in my brows. HOT!

The finishing touches on my eye area: Filling in your brows. This is SUPER DUPER important in photographic makeup as your brows frame your face. Hopefully, your esthetician isn't your friend from highschool's cheating exgirlfriend and you have beautiful brows. I took a matte black eyeshadow and pressed it into my lash line and added a healthy coat of black mascara.

The last thing I did was take a color that I consider to my MLBB (My Lips But Better) and apply that to my lips. I also used my face powder to make it a matte finish. Resist the temptation to add blush. It won't look right!

Just imagine how nice this would look without my weird expression and with nice hair, wardrobe, and a really photographer!

I ALSO DECIDED I WANTED TO SHOW YOU A DARKER PHOTOGRAPHIC MAKEUP LOOK. I didn't have time to take pictures of every step, but I will walk you through what I did now that you've got the basics down.
Changing to the dramatic look was SUPER easy. I took the same matte black eyeshadow on a round contour crease brush and blended it into from the outer corner into and above the crease. I took the same dark brown eyeshadow from earlier and went over my cream foundation contour lines and a very light matte peach to go over the highlighted part of my face. I added black liner smudged with the contour crease brush into my  bottom lashes and opted for a darker matte lip.

As you can see, the contouring that looked frighteningly dark in color fades into a nice defined cheek bone. If only I had thought to do something else with my hair and take a real pretty picture.


TYPICAL JAYNE FACE. WHAAAT?

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