Secrets of a pro makeup artist

Good makeup artists can create perfectly flawless skin and super shiny locks on just about anyone. But just how do they do it? There are plenty of backstage tricks, tips and trade secrets that they possess and here, exclusively for Asian Woman magazine, PRO MUA Nina Ubhi reveals a few of her best techniques…

BRONZE GODDESS

Mix a few drops of Baby Oil with a liquid body bronzer or an immediate self tan lotion and then rub over your arms, legs, décolletage for a golden glow with a healthy sheen. Always use a mitt to avoid the dreaded tanned palms.

QUICK SMOKEY EYE

As Make Up Artists, we have to be super fast as creating looks backstage on our models. A quick way to get a daytime smokey eye is to line the upper lash and lower lash all the way around with a soft black khol pencil. Don’t worry about achieving a perfect line, it can be as jagged as you want. Make the upper lash line quite thick and lower lash should be thinner. With a Q-tip smudge ‘only’ the edges of the lines. The trick is to only smudge the very edge of your liner, this keeps the depth nice and deep whilst the edges are faded and smokey. You can smooth out the edges and transform the smokey eye into fierce feline peepers by smoothing over the edges outwards with a dome fluff brush. Add a touch of highlighting shadow or a pale gold sheen to the centre of your eyelid and it will amp up the look even more.

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Yes, we sometimes misplace products in our kit! So what do we do when we’re on a shoot or booking and can’t find the right colour or texture? We create it. Any PRO MUA will have an extensive MU Kit which can rarely fit into just one box. With a huge variety of colours, textures and products it’s imperative as a MUA to ‘think outside the box’ at all times. If I don’t have the perfect lip colour for a client or for my vision then I create it using loose shadow and a thick gloss. If I want a matte finish to the colour then I mix the shadow with thick face cream. The same applies to any part of the face. It’s all about your sense of creativity and confidence.

For the colour block bindi I had in mind, I used lipsticks and also mixed shadows to creams for the correct colours in this look.

CONTOURING

You can alter face shapes, slim a round face, shorten a long face, slim a nose, create cheekbones, define a jaw line and much more with contouring. For at home methods a matte bronzer with a brown undertone works best but it’s important to understand the structure of the face before trying this out. On photo shoots, I use a much darker cream foundation for contouring. I swipe a line with my finger everywhere I’ll be contouring so I have my positions correct and symmetrical then blend the edges with my finger.

BRONZED ILLUMINOSITY

I don’t always have time to bronze and highlight the face separately so my staple product is Illamasqua Metal Powder in Thalia £22.50 www.illamasqua.com applied directly onto the cheekbone it defines the cheekbone and also highlights just above the bone. A perfect all in one and guaranteed compliments!

ILLUSION OF PLUMP LIPS

You may already know that a dab of highlighter in the centre of the lower lip creates the illusion of fuller, plumper lips, this works on all paler lip shades.

I wanted to create a fuller, plump Red lip, so I dabbed a Gold eye shadow in the centre of the lower lip instead. Gold compliments a red lip perfectly.