The primary goal of corrective make-up is to accent a person's best features while minimizing a person's unflattering features or flaws. This can be a very touchy matter, because the make-up artist has to scrutinize a person's features and tell the client what parts of her body and face need touching up. This consultation can result in hurt feelings if not done with tact and compassion.
There are a few basic rules to remember when applying make-up. The first rule is to remember that highlighting an area emphasizes a feature. Shadowing an are minimizes it. Highlighting uses colors that are a shade or more lighter than a person's natural skin tone, while shadowing uses darker shades. Another rule is that the ideal face should be oval shaped, approximately three-fourths wide as it is long. The distance between the eyes should equal the width of one eye. These rules, like any rules, can be altered or even broken, depending on what result is desired in the end.
Face shape is always the first consideration. There are seven face shapes: oval, round, squared, pear-shaped (wide-jawed), heart-shaped (wide forehead, narrow jaw), diamond-shaped (wide cheekbones), and oblong (a long and narrow face). The goal is to make the face as oval and as proportionate as possible. Corrective make-up takes the face shapes into consideration and uses highlighting and shadowing to add width where it is needed, or to conceal excess width.
For instance, let's look at the round shaped face. The objective is to slenderize the face, which can be done by applying darker foundation on the sides of the face, thus shadowing excess width and creating the illusion of extra length. For a square shaped face, color selection is important because you want to soften the hard lines. If you've ever heard someone say, "She's a hard looking woman", they usually are referring to someone with a squared face.
Pear-shaped faces are characterized by a wide jaw and narrow forehead. The goal is to create width at the forehead, using highlighting, and to slenderize the jaw by shadowing. Oblong faces need width the most, so lighter colors are used. The same highlighting and shadowing principles apply to every other face shape. Lights and darks are used to make the face appear oval.
There are special corrective techniques to deal with specific problems, like wrinkles, double-chins, and off-set eyes. To fix these problems, make sure you have the essential products, such as concealer, foundation, powder, eye color, lip color, etc. Color selection should be based on the person's skin tone, eye color, and hair color. Remember that you are an artist and the make-up is your palette. Have different shades of foundation and shadow on hand because these will be the tools you need to perform corrective make up.
