START WITH THE FACE, NOT THE PRODUCT

Before choosing colour, study the face.

A professional makeup artist does not begin with:

What eyeshadow should I use?

The better question is:

What already exists on this face, and what do I want to change, preserve, or emphasise?

Read the face through five variables:

Structure — bone structure, planes, projection and depth.

Proportion — the relationship between forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks, lips and jaw.

Direction — whether features visually move upward, downward, inward or outward.

Contrast — the natural difference between skin, eyes, brows, lips and hair.

Surface — skin texture, pores, dryness, oil, fine lines and reflectivity.

This gives us the first principle:

Do not correct a face before you understand it.

The goal is not automatically to make every face conform to the same ideal proportion. Sometimes we balance. Sometimes we exaggerate. Sometimes we deliberately preserve an unusual feature because it gives the face character.