Take Care of Your Skin!

Why do so many adults not use a skincare regiment? Makeup is only as good as the skin.

I see it a lot with my private clients. Someone will come in for a lesson or hire me to do their makeup for a shoot and their skin will be rough and neglected. They might be super dry and red or overly oily and broken out. I’m surprised at how many “regular” clients (non-industry) do not take care of their skin. I always start any lesson or session with questions about skincare. What do you use on your face? Most don’t even know what they wash their face with, or they use some random thing from the grocery store, or a sample someone gave them. I recently worked with a group that used an MLM line and they had the most bizarre ideas about how to treat their skin. (That is another post altogether!) (But I’ll give you one of them, it had to do with the idea that a scrub brush helped prevent wrinkles…?)

Tatcha has luxurious and effective skincare

A Neglected Skin is a Skin in Stress

Working on faces/skins that are not taken care of is challenging as a makeup artist. Makeup is only going to be as smooth and pretty as the skin it sits on. Many clients expect makeup to erase/soften texture or eliminate their pores, which is a crazy. Skincare does that, not makeup. They don’t understand why their makeup looks rough or why things burn on their face, or slide off, disappear or flake. They want to cover acne and expect makeup to make it look invisible. What they don’t seem to understand is that makeup is not magic. Well, it is magical but will never make texture or blemishes disappear. I mean, photoshop will. Filters on your phone will. But that is not makeup’s job.

However!!!!! A lot of those issues can be helped by taking care of the skin.

A skin that isn’t properly cleansed, hydrated, moisturized and protected is going to be in stress. It is going to be cranky whether that means it is dry and irritated or overly oily and broken out. It is letting you know that it is unhappy! Sometimes, when I’m working with a client who has rough dry skin, I have them (with clean hands) touch my face with the back of their fingers. They are always so surprised at how soft and smooth my skin is. I’m like, “yep, that is what moisturizer will do for you.”

What is Basic Skincare?

At the least everyone should be using a decent cleanser. If you wear makeup, that cleanser needs to remove makeup. The best options for this are cleansing oils. If you are not a makeup wearer, a decent and gentle (not soapy) cleanser is great. Most doctor recommend products contain harsh ingredients and can strip the skin. Plus they do not remove makeup well. I won’t go into specifics but will reference a great article by Sonia Roselli on the subject.

Okay, #1 is to have a good cleanser. I have a list of favorites below.