Correction of the Face, Part I

Moving out of clown land and into our Ben Nye makeup boxes, the first thing the class worked on was mixing the colours in our kits and determining base, highlight, and shadow as well as bruises and colours in general using a pyramid scheme (don't worry, not the annoying money grubbing kind).

Colour mixing foundation chart for base

Colour mixing foundation chart for colours

Colour mixing foundation chart for bruises

Next we took a good look at our faces and the "imperfections" that we were going to correct.  The most important step, after a good wash and moisturize, is to apply yellow stick on dark spots on the face and dark circles under the eyes.  A green stick should be applied to any red spots and blemishes.

Now the base can be applied and all over the face until the yellow and green sticks have disappeared along with the blemishes.  Once the base is even, shadow should be applied to any recesses of the face (cheek bones, chin, jaw line, sides of nose, inner corner of eye, under brow bone, temple, under lips) with thin lines and highlight lines should be applied above or beside the shadow lines, depending on where you're shadowing.  Blend everything and remember, the goal is to emphasize the good stuff!

A makeup recipe face half filled with lines in the correct colours denoting where yellow and green sticks go, the colour of the base, and where shadow and highlights go for my face.

And here is half of my face done with corrective:

The right side of the face (left as you look at it) has the corrective on it and has covered my bed blotchiness as well as the circles under my eyes and the dark acne scars under my lips.

Profile shows the contouring of my jawline and cheek bones.

The same concept can be applied with street makeup.  The yellow and green sticks are fantastic "cheat codes" for your face that you can find in many forms and with many cosmetic providers.