Experience is the key to your education

In class I get you to work on each other; there are a couple of reasons for this:

1) You get to work on a different face each lesson

- this gives you the opportunity to experience different skin tones and skin textures (very important when choosing the type of products, particularly foundations and shimmers) to apply to the client; for example you would never do a dewy look on someone who has pitted or crepe dry skin as you would magnify how bad the skin looks rather than making it look flawless and beautiful.

- it also gives you experience with different eye shapes and eye colours – how to make the individual client’s eye colour ‘pop’ as well as how to correct a droopy eye shape, or how to make a very round eye look almond, how to make eyes that are close together look further apart etc

- Understanding different face shapes and bone structures, so that you get familiar with truly tailoring your makeup to the features you are actually working on, not just a ‘paint by numbers’ application, whereby you place products in exactly the same place on every persons face regardless of their individual features. I see this a lot on social media, girls that are doing virtually the same makeups on everyone, not having the ability to ‘design’ the makeup according to the individual features and the client’s personal preference.

2) It is vital that you know what it feels like to be a client.

Some girls are quite rough, or very rushed with their makeup application – from a client perspective this is an awful experience and will effect whether they book you again or refer you to their friends. A client should always feel pampered and looked after, that they are your most important client and that they are really valued by you. When makeup is applied with too much pressure, or is rushed and applied quickly and heavily, it makes the person feel as though they are just a number to you, that you don’t care about the quality of your work and you just want to finish their makeup as soon as possible so you can get paid and get onto your next job.

These are the reasons I insist on my students working on each other. I also find in courses whereby you have to bring a model, it can be hard to find someone who is available during class time, so you often end up working on the same face for the whole course and really diminishing your learning experience.