Face Charts - Practise

Before applying makeup on any client/model, it is always best to plan out your design on a face chart as this shows an accurate representation of what your model's face will look like after you have finished the makeup. It always helps for when you are working on a client to plan out a face chart look so you can show them what the finished outcome will look like and if they or yourself want to change anything about it. In the makeup industry, especially for fashion makeup artists working on catwalks and runways around the world, quite often this can be all fast paced and there is very limited time to come up with and create a new design idea within the time you are given so to come prepared with either one or sometimes several different looks will come in very useful.

After spending some time with the class looking at colour theory and learning about all the possible colour combinations to create and what works well on the face, we were given a face chart and were told to just come up with any idea we wanted.

I had mixed feelings about this as I had never created a face chart before so I was feeling slightly nervous but I felt a little better after I researched some designs and looked at some different face charts and started to think of some ideas in my head.

I didn't know too much about where my face chart was heading, but I just got my makeup and brushes out and started practising. I used my makeup brushes, MAC warm neutral eyeshadow palette and Kryolan glamour glow essence palette.

I started with the eyebrows so this could give the definition to the face and I used a light brown eyeshadow and an angled brush and gave an arched shape with faded hairs at the front to create the look and effect of an actual eyebrow. Next, I moved on to the eyes and I used a black fine liner to draw a flicked eyeliner wing and then a light brown eyeshadow on the eyelid and then using a small, thin brush dipped in a darker brown eyeshadow, I created a cut crease look. I used a small brush again and put black eyeshadow on the bottom, lower eyelid and then again using the fine liner, I drew small thin lines at the tops and bottoms of the eyelids to give the effect of real eyelashes. Just to give it a bit more detail, I added a blue eyeshadow on to the eye pupil to make it look more realistic.

For the face, I used a larger brush and dipped it into a medium brown shade and brushed down the cheekbones to give a contour look to the face. I took a normal drawing pencil and drew the shape and shadow of a nose and then went around this in a brown eyeshadow. I took a lighter brown colour and sweeped it across the face just so the paper didn't look too white compared to the rest of the face. The last step was the lips, I took the fine liner and drew around the lips and also drew some thicker lines on the inside to give the effect of a 'pouted lip'. I then took a medium pink colour and added this.

I am quite happy with how this face chart turned out, considering this is the first one I have ever done and also because we used paper instead of real face charts, so it was harder to blend. I am very excited to keep practising and creating more designs and becoming better at blending on them.