Holly's demo:
As a makeup artist, you will have to work around alot of elements that could potentially change the way a makeup application looks. One of these elements is black and white photography. Makeup for colour photography is all about the colour, hue and intensity of the makeup used. However when doing black and white, all those tones disappear. I found this great example demonstarating this point on http://www.dallascurowblog.com/2011/12/makeup-for-colour-and-black-and-white.html
As you can see, the intensity of the makeup look is lost. The blush has blended into the skin tone, the brows look a little sparse and the lips certainly dont pop. Overall the face looks very flat and one dimentional!
And here is the same look, far more intense. For colour photography this look would be considered far too harsh and unnatural. However for black and white it has made the look pop. The eyeshadow is more defined as well as the contour, the brows are filled in heavier and the lips act as the look's statement feature. Texture, tone, light and shade is important when using black and white. Examples include matte skin, contrasted by glossy lips. For eyeshadow you may want to use contrasting tones on the eye, example black and white.
Now it's time for my turn! Having lost final images of the work I done in class, I decided to give this look another go while at home on myself. When it came to the makeup, I was able to go more dramatic than usual.
1. I first started with the eyes. I knew that I wanted to do a brown smokey eye with alots of dark browns and blacks. To reduce clean up I started with the eyes first. Knowing the photograph was going to be in black and white, I also made the light and brow bone very light by using a mix of an ivory and white.
2. Next I moved onto the brows. As demonstated above, when shooting in black and white the brows can look quite sparse and unforgiving. To conteract this I made sure to fill my brows in quite heavy. To do so I used a dark brown brow pomade by the brand Freedom. This is a great alternative to the more expensive Anastaisa pomade and at only a fraction of the price it is a great addition to anyone's collection. I've included a review of this product below!
3. With black and white makeup, you can really change the structure of the face by playing with the lights and darks on a face. This is a really interesting consept for me since I have a very round face with non existant cheekbones! I first used Urban Decay's Naked Foundation all over the skin and then used my cream contour kit from Makeup Revolution to contour and highlight the face. I used far lighter and darker colours then usual to create more contrast. Once my face was set with Ben Nye's Fair, I exhanced my contour further with powder.
4. For the lips, I really wanted them to be the stand out feature of the face. To make them a dark colour as shown in black and white I used a dark red to finish the look. Below is the overall look..
Having lost my original pictures from the lesson, I was quite upset as I really liked how the makeup look came out on my model. Despite this, I still like what I managed to recreate on myself. Looking at the picture, I thought I'd already gone quite heavy with the contour but now I realise that I could have gone even heavier still. Overall, Im happy with the look I created and I think it works well for a black and white brief!
References:
http://www.dallascurowblog.com/2011/12/makeup-for-colour-and-black-and-white.html