Experimenting: The Scott Barnes Technique

My New Years resolution this year is to really knuckle down with studying makeup. When you’re in fulltime work and can’t afford to go to college, self-teaching is really your only option! So to kick start, I bought a ton of makeup books I’d been lusting after with my Christmas money to go with some that I was very kindly gifted!

One of the books I was really surprised by was “AboutFace: Celebrity Makeup Techniques” by Scott Barnes. I didn’t know much about him, but the gorgeous photo of J-Lo, for whom Scott famously works for a lot, sucked me in. I was really surprised with the book and the  approaches that he uses. Firstly, Scott explains  that he thinks in terms of light and the way the light hits the face, as opposed to purely the facial structure. This helps him achieve a really glowing, contoured look. Sounds good, right? You might be more familiar with his technique than you thought…

Yikes! I’m sure you’re all familiar with this photo and the methods that Kim K uses. Well, Scott Barnes is her makeup artist! He contours and highlights the skin with foundations/correctors before buffing everything in with a foundation that matches your skin tone. It sounds and looks bonkers, but like it or not, you can’t deny it’s a transformation and a half!

Here’s a snap from the book – you can see it’s a method he employs on everyone, not just celebrities. I was dubious – in the book, you can see in the final photos the models are wearing a lot of makeup – a lot! Some shots almost look like theatrical makeup as opposed to glamour or beauty makeup. I did find this strange, as much of the books is laid out like a makeover book with before and after shots and interviews with the people in the photos – to me, a makeover generally suggest something practical that the person can take away with them and use in real life! Nevertheless, the book is crammed with lots of different types of tips and tricks and surely someone held in such high regard can’t be wrong? I have  used darker foundation to contour my cheekbones many a time, so I decided to give it a go and try the technique – with a slightly lighter hand!

My tool of choice was this concealer palette which you can get from Coastal Scents, eBay, etc., for an absolute steal. I’ve use some of the colours before for contouring and it’s actually a handy little palette. For reference, I used the yellow corrector with the top colour on the far right hand column. While probably a tad warm for concealing, I wanted a palette at my reach so I could switch colours if necessary. Although both colours were matte, and Scott constantly talks about the “glow,” he rarely mentions any illuminating products, so I decided to go with the palette.

For starts, here’s my naked face. Just moisturiser, nothing else. Forgive my slightly grubby looking left eye, I had a liner mishap which stained horribly! You can see here I don’t have bad cheekbones at all, but a little more definition always looks good.
So let’s get started. Adding a dark colour to my the sides and tip of my nose, jawline, underneath my cheekbones and forehead. In with the yellow concealer under my eyes….

…and down my nose, the tops of my cheeks, browbones, chin, and down my nose. Not quite as bad as Kim K? Oh, fine, it looks bonkers. I followed the photos in the book where he applies the lighter shades in a less angular/stripy way that on the photo of Kim.

Now I’ve taken my regular foundation on a buffing brush and really working it all in… work, work, work. You can see my hairline is looking a bit iffy still. If I look worried, it’s because I’m really rather worried. I feel like I have a metric fuckton of slap on.

Despite buffing for about ten years, my powder puff after setting the makeup attests to the fact that I do indeed have a metric fuckton of slap on. Well, we’re done…

Here it is, all blended out and powdered with no blush, lip or eye makeup. It looked much more dramatic in real life, but not quite in the realms of Drag Queen or indeed Kim K. My skin certainly looks MUCH nicer in the after shot, doesn’t it? I particularly like how my nose looks, as this is an area I never really contour at all, although I don’t think I’ll bring the dark foundation up so high next time. I was careful not to use too much product during the process, as I didn’t want to make a huge awful mess. I found it tricky and I still feel like I was wearing so much, so I dread to think how much product some of the people in his shots have on their face!

My main problem with the technique was under the eyes. My skin is a little crêpey there, and too much product never looks good on me in that area. So, I just use the yellow corrector in the hope that that blended out with my foundation would be enough. Compared to the rest of my face, I think my dark circles look horrendous! I’ll certainly have to play with which stage to use which product in that area – I’ll try using my under-eye concealer to blend out the yellow-toned corrector, or try my usual peach corrector instead of the yellow. I’m very, very keen to avoid the horrible reverse-racoon look you see on some celebrities and that does feature a little in Scott’s book. Hey, to each their own, and I won’t moan about how it looks unnatural while I’m wearing so much makeup myself, but still, it’s not for me.

Eyes: Inglot shadows, Benefit Eyeliner in Steel, Collection 24/7 Extreme Liner in Black.
Cheeks: Mac Buff, Boots No 7 Vital Illuminating Highlighter
Lips: LA Colours Lip Liner in Natural, Maybelline Mauve Diamonds

Here’s my full face, just because! I couldn’t face a smoky or colourful eye after all that, especially just to sit around the house in PJs! I suppose the real question is… would I wear this technique again? I definitely would, but it is a LOT of makeup for a normal day, and as you can see, I  felt the need for a little bit of blush and a touch of powder highlighter as it still looked as if I was lacking something and I needed a bit of colour. For a night out on the tiles, or on one of my models, though, sure, I’d do this again! It’s certainly very glam and I did catch myself looking in the mirror quite a lot! So for a fancy do, absolutely. For nipping down the shop or..well, most things, probably not! It’s a very effective and surprisingly easy technique, and I’d recommend it if you have trouble contouring with powder as it does seem more intuitive, but I don’t think it’s practical for most women everyday. I went through a LOT of Bioderma that night..

Bleh!

Well, while it’s not for everyone, it’s certainly a fab book and well worth a read if you’re interested in makeup artistry. Would you try this technique?

AboutFace: Celebrity Makeup Techniques is available on Amazon, where you can read the introduction, for roughly £10.

Step by Step: Wet N Wild “Shimmer The Night Away” Look

Christmas and New Years are long gone, my annual ski trip has just ended and the rest of January is looking miserably dull and grey, grey, grey. So I have a cute, shimmery tutorial for you, hurrah! All shadows are from the super cute “Shimmer The Night Away” 8 pan palette from Wet N’ Wild (thanks Wendy!) Here’s the look we’re going for:

 

 

1: Apply your primer. Brush the white ‘browbone’ colour all over your lid and inner corner, and then work the silver “eyelid” shade in your crease with a fluffy brush, starting from the outside in, taking care not to go below the crease.

2: Using a small brush, take the silver along your lower waterline, making it a little thicker on the outside corner. Then take the pinky-purple “eyelid” shade on one side of a small, c-shaped brush and sweep it about a third of the way across the outside of your lid.

4: Add more of the pink-purple to build up the intensity, and when that’s done, take the black “definer” shade on the left hand side and define your crease line and lower lashline.

5: Take a blue pencil eyeliner and line your upper lashline, then go over it with the blue “definer” shade.

5: Make a wing with black eyeliner as usual, and link it up to the blue liner. Add liner on the waterline, if you like, and blend out any harsh edges with your face powder or a matte skin tone shade. Then do your brows and mascara/lashes, et voila! You're done….

The lips are MAC Pink Nouveau (thanks Rachael!) with my old favourite, GOSH Light N Shine no 5 gloss. I fancied something really girly to go with the eyes.

 

I love wearing makeup that my blogger friends have sent to me, it make me think of them whenever I look in the mirror!

Are you brightening up January by wearing bright or funky makeup?

MAC Sheen Supreme Swatches: Insanely It, Asian Flower, Look At Her!, Quite The Thing!

I have a suspicious feeling that the MAC Sheen Supremes are going to be my next lipstick obsession! MAC says…

“Combining the colour impact of a Lipstick with the shine sheen of a Lipglass, Sheen Supreme creates the perfect hybrid – with no compromise. Lightweight, non-sticky, slick to apply and comfortable to wear. This is a must-have for all those who have craved this kind of fusion.”

Balmy yet pigmented colours are a pretty big gap in my makeup collection that I’m hoping to fill with the Sheen Supremes! (I didn’t buy any Revlon Lip Butters last year… not a one!) I have to say they’re pretty true to MAC’s claims… they’re lightweight to wear, dead easy to apply on the go and my dry lips really like them. As with a lot of sheer, pigmented colours, more than a couple of swipes can mean you end up with too much product on your lips and the colour can “bunch” together, but generally, these are a total dream! I also love the sleek, black metal packaging for these – really chic!

“Insanely It”

Described on the MAC site as “Watermelon Pink,” I think this would be a nice, slightly less in-your-face alternative to Impassioned, which I intend to layer this over very soon! It’s got a healthy dose of pink sparkle which makes it look even glossier.

“Asian Flower”

“Creamy Lavender.” Bang on. I’ve tried many creamy lavenders and this is the only one I find actually wearable on me – it’s got enough pink in it that it doesn’t look like a strange pastel on my skin.

“Look At Her!”

“Metallic Copper.” Some people would hate this shade… I love love love it, sorry! I like that the range has metallics and cremes along with the glossy, balmy formulas and that you still get the benefit of a comfortable lip colour. This one is slightly drier than my others. (Thanks to Rachael who gave this to me! <3 )




”Quite The Thing!”

“Deep blue plum.” Not quite sure about the description from MAC there, but okay. I absolutely love this one. A great purple for people who are scared of purples! It has a bunch of fuschia/pink shimmer and I’m dying to try it over a dark liner!

Sheen Supremes come in at an eye-watering (in my opinion!) £14.50. There’s 21 shades in the range and in particular I’m lusting for Korean Candy… any recommendations for me?

How To: Create A Black Smoky Eye

Most of you reading this will be super clued up on smoky eyes, but it’s one of the things I get asked most for help with by my friends. I taught a friend to do a look very similar to the one in this post a couple of weeks ago, and she said I should write it up because she found it so useful. Like the others in my How To series, this is quite an in depth post, so grab a cuppa! This look can be easily adapted for monolids, but this tutorial is for an eye with a crease. The look we’ll be doing is this:

 

You will need:

Eye Primer (See my primer post here)
Black eyeshadow ( matte)
Cool brown eyeshadow (matte)
Skin tone coloured eyeshadow or face powder (matte)
A silver or gunmetal colour (shimmer/satin)
Pencil and/or liquid liner as preferred
Mascara
Flat, paddle like eyeshadow brush
Fluffy blending brushes (preferably two)
Small detailer brush

As you can see, it’s a matte black smoky eye,  but it’s not too deep, dramatic harsh looking so will go with lots of dress styles and personalities! I’ve chosen matte because that’s what springs to mind when I think of the word smoky, but you can use shimmer if you like, especially if you’re new to makeup as a lot of people find them easier to work with. Many people are really scared to use black eyeshadow, and it’s something even people who are more used to wearing makeup struggle with sometimes , so before I go into the full how-to, some general tips for the look:

Keep a spare, clean blending brush handy in case yours gets too dirty to blend effectively
Do your foundation and concealer after your eye makeup so you can clear up any fall-out
Don’t worry if it’s not totally perfect – it’s called smoky for a reason! In my opinion, slightly messy dark eyes can look great, so relax
Never ‘cut’ your eye in half – if you put a colour on and it’s not going all over the eye, make sure it goes 1/3 or 2/3 of the way across, never half way. Going half way across the eye and stopping in the middle can make your eye shape look very odd!

1: Base Colour

Apply your eye primer and let it set.  If you want to apply a black base to really make your colour dark, then do so now. You could use a kohl pencil or a black paint pot, and just take it up to your crease. I didn’t want to go too full on, so I chose not to, but you could and it won’t affect the rest of the instructions in the post! Then pack your black eyeshadow with a flat paddle brush onto your entire upper eyelid, to the crease in your eye. Don’t worry about  being too neat at this stage, but take care not to extend the black too far past the end of your lid. You might have seen this diagram before in regards to eyebrow shaping:

Line B is a pretty good guide as where your eyeshadow should stop – when you’re learning and figuring things out, at least. If you go too far out past your line B, you’ll be applying makeup outside where the socket of your eye is (have a feel!), which when you think about it, means you’re not really defining your eye any longer. We don’t want to go too far with our black colour at this stage as we still have to blend it later.

Step 2: Inner Corner

Taking a small detailer brush, dab a silver into the inner corner of your eye and gently fade the colour out with small sweeping motions along your lower lashline Using the same small sweeping motions motions, fade the colour out upwards towards your crease. You can see in the second photo that I’ve placed the colour slightly above the black – this is so it can join up when we blend our crease later.

The reason I picked silver/gunmetal is simply because it’s easier to blend into black than a gold or a pale shimmery champagne or skin tone colour without looking muddy or dirty, but of course you could use one if you wanted to. The rest of this look is matte, so a little touch of shimmer is really pretty in my opinion (and shimmery colours are easier to blend, generally)

(I should made a note at this point that the order of these steps doesn’t matter too much, these are just the way that doing an eye makes sense to me!)

Step 3: Lower Lashline

Apply a soft eyeliner pencil to the lower lashline from the outside corner to about 2/3 of the way in, and smudge it in toward the inner corner, starting at the outside with what black shadow is left on your flat paddle brush. Add a little more black shadow on the brush if you need to. Go gently across to meet up with the silver. You shouldn’t have any problems with blending the colours together as you won’t have much black product left on your brush by the time you meet up with the silver.

If you like a darker look, or if you don’t want to apply liquid liner later, you can use the same technique on the top lashlines too.

Step 4: Crease Colour

This is probably the trickiest part of the whole thing and where the smokiness comes in – you want a nice blended crease. It’s very hard to explain how to do this part in writing, but I will say one thing that will really help newbies… STEP AWAY FROM THE BLACK!

I don’t use black to blend out a black smoky eye. Especially with mattes, black can be very difficult to blend and can often look muddy, patchy, and you won’t get a nice faded-out effect once you’re done. On the left is a smudged black shadow, and on the right is a smudged cool brown shadow - they don’t look that much different, do they?  Dark, cool colours like browns ( or purples and navy blues) are quite often going to be more pigmented and less patchy looking than black eyeshadows, so if you’re scared of or new to black, go for a brown (or purple or navy) to blend out your crease. You’ll still get the depth you need, and you’ll get that faded-out effect much more easily.

Again, it’s hard to explain how to blend, but take a fluffy blending brush and just a little shadow at a time. I usually use a MAC 217 for this as the slightly flattened shape fits nicely in my crease, and I like natural hair bristles for blending powder products a bit more – I find that shadow clings to it a little better. Crown do a nice dupe as well for much cheaper.

When blending, look straight ahead for both eyes, and keep your eyes open. If you look down too much or have your head at an angle when you’re blending, you won’t necessarily be applying far up or out enough and you won’t see anything when you open your eyes or when you face forward again. Anyway, start with your brush in the outer corner as shown and find your socket.  Sarting there, blend in little circular motion, and as you take the colour in toward your nose, use smaller windshield wiper motions. Add more product if you need, but don’t go in with too much – you can always add more, but taking it away is pretty much impossible, so tap off any excess. Make sure to hook the colour up with the silver you placed earlier.

From time to time, look at your eyes at different angles to see if they’re even from different viewpoints. See how the shape looks really different from this angle compared to the last photo? It’s a little weird, but looking at a different angle can be really helpful if you’re not sure if you need to add extra to one eye and not the other! Making sure you’re doing your makeup in a mirror where you can see your whole face, and not just one eye at a time is always really helpful for this.

Step 5: Additional Blending

Phew! The eyeshadow part is nearly finished! Take a clean fluffy brush and some either some skin coloured shadow or your face powder, and gently blend out any hard lines or edges on the top of the brown shadow you’ve just applied. Use the little windshield wiper motions again. This is a really useful little step and makes the whole thing look a bit more polished.

If you need to, take a bit more dark brown and blend out the outer corner of your lower lashline. You can use your flat paddle brush, and gently do a little windshield wiper motion on the underside of the black – your blending brushes will be too big for this area. Again, this is a just to make it look a bit more polished and so it matched up to the top. The upper and lower lashlines don’t need to fully connect (my eyes always water there anyway, so personally I don’t bother) but there shouldn’t be a big old gap between the two or it can look a bit jarring.
 

You may have noticed that I didn’t add a highlight to this look. Of course you can if you want, but I chose not to. I really like an almost wholly matte smokey eye, and sometimes it can be hard to find a highlight colour that won’t be too shimmery against your pretty much exclusively matte look. I find with this look, because you’ve created a nice gradient with the black-brown-skin tone, if your brows are nicely groomed, your natural skin colour will help create that lifted effect anyway. I also find a lot of drugstore palettes lack a nice mix of textures, so sometimes it’s just easier to skip! For example, the Sleek Storm palette has a matte black, brown and tan you could easily do this look with, but the highlight colours are chunky and very metallic!  It’s really up to you whether you choose to add one or not.

Step 6: Quick Winged Liner Tip!

Well, that’s your shadow all done! Now you can add liner, brows and mascara as you wish. I pretty much always wear winged liner, and I’m going to do a separate post on that at some point but I do have one tip right now! When doing your wing, imagine you’ve drawn liner along your lower waterline and you are following it out toward the end of your brow, like in the top photo. If you trace your upper lashline and follow that out, this will make your liner point slightly downwards. Every eye shape is of course different, but this is a good rule of thumb in my experience.False lashes are always fun and dramatic, so of course you can add those if you want. I was heading downstairs to sit on the Xbox so I couldn’t be bothered!

I finished my look by filling in my brows with powder so they looked defined but not too harsh. I then went full out with a red lip, and kept my cheeks neutral. The best thing about a black smoky eye is you can wear pretty much anything on your cheeks and lips and always look pulled together. Yay!

Products used:
Eyes: Sleek Black, Inglot Dark Brown and skin tone shadows, Wet N Wild Silver, Urban Decay Perversion pencil, Miss Sporty Lash Millionare mascara, MUA Professional Brow Kit
Cheeks: MAC Buff, Boots No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter
Lips: LA Colors Lip Liner in Forever Red, Wet N Wild Shine On Lipstick in 514A Cherry Frost

I hope that was useful to someone! Thanks for reading all the way if you did! If you have questions, or I if I missed anything stupid or obvious, please let me know.

2012 Roundup: My Favourite Looks

Well, the year is nearly over! I’m still on a turkey comedown and am too lazy to write any new content, so here are my top ten looks of 2012. In no particular order…

 

Purple Plushie Tutorial using Sleek and Fyrinnae

Bat Romance using Sleek and Sugarpill



Heartbreaker Palette look using Sugarpill and LA Colors Jumbo Pencil


Mermaid look using Sugarpill, Inglot and Paperself lashes

Taupe Eyes and Purple Lips Tutorial using elf, Maybelline and Inglot

Rainbow in The Dark using Sugarpill and Sleek



Love+ using Sugarpill, Sleek and MAC

Government Hooker using Sugarpill and Fyrinnae



Mickey Mouse using Sugarpill, Maybelline and Darling Girl

Cryin’ using Inglot, KIKO and MAC

Ok, ok. These are all pretty out-there looks apart from the purple and taupe look, but hey. I guess that goes to show that I prefer the more out-there looks after all – I was worried I’d got boring during 2012! If I had to pick one, I’d pick the Mermaid look – I got really nice comments from the people at Illamasqua on Twitter (although a weird comment or two asking why I’d pierced my eye?! *shrug*)

 

Link me to your favourite looks of the year!