Editorial Makeup for Black & White Photography

Tone, sculpt, shape and texture for editorial beauty

Current Trends- 25 January 2016

Today's lesson was about editorial makeup for black & white photography. Holly taught us a few different techniques and tips for this sort of makeup. Black & white photography is slightly different than a normal editorial shoot.
You as a makeup artist need to analyse the skin in a slightly different way. You're not looking to conceal the redness for example, but any darkness, the tones of the skin. Black & white photography is not about colours, but trying to create tone and texture.
Instead of thinking about what colours to use, you need to think about tones. A soft contoured look always looks great in black & white photography. Blush is not so important as it won't show on the photos. A bold lip and a nice contour on the eyes is also a great choice. Prepping the skin is also very important, because you want to create a soft, velvety texture for the skin. Skin can look quite flat in black & white so it's nice to give it some texture by using a strobe cream, or any sort of highlighter.

Holly's demo

After prepping the models's skin, Holly applied Bourjois Healthy Mix foundation on the skin. She's done two different looks on both sides of the face. On the right hand side Holly created a more natural look. She used only cream products on this side to create a soft, velvety finish. She advised us to use a gloss to highlight, or vaseline, or mac essential oil or any sort of cream based highlighter. She decided to use a tinted Dr. Paw Paw tinted red balm. She also advised us not to powder the whole skin because we want to add some dimension to the skin. Powder would make the skin look flat in black & white photos.

She than applied a dark brown eyeshadow to the crease and added the same Paw Paw balm on top for texture and sheen. A tinted lip balm is a very good choice to give the skin a natural highlight as it creates a natural balmy look.



On the left hand side she used powder highlighter and contour powder (Charlotte Tilbury Filmstar Bronze & Glow) and applied them quite heavily. She also applied this highlighter on the bridge of the nose. She than added MAC Gold Finishing powder for extra sheen on the top of the cheekbones.

Holly than lined the eye with a white acrylic paint by MAC and applied a couple of coats of black mascara.

The finished look

Practical

Before photo

After I cleansed, toned and moisturised my model's skin, I applied Face & Body foundation by Mac all over her skin. I mixed shades C3 and C4 to get the right shade. I then mixed a touch of D2 and D10 shades of my Dermacolor Concealer palette and applied this mixture on any blemishes that I wanted to conceal. I also applied some D9 underneath the eyes to hide any darkness under the eyes. I then used a tiny amount of translucent powder by Ben Nye to set the concealer and foundation underneath the eyes and in the T-zone.

I than used a small amount of MAC Clear Lipgloss on the top of the cheekbones as a highlight. I also used this product on the eyelids. I didn't really like this product for highlighting if I'm honest. I found it way too sticky for the skin, so I will definitely opt for another product in the future (Vaseline works much better in my opinion).

On the other side I used MAC Shadowy D55 contour powder as a contour colour, followed by Inglot HD Loose Powder Illuminizing Highlighter Fairy DIAMOND DUST Shimmer as a highlight. Looking back at the photos now, I think I could have used a little bit more concealer to cover my model's tiny blemishes below the hollow of her cheeks.

I then  moved onto the eyes. I applied a thin layer of NYX Jumbo pencil in Milk on the moving eyelid as a base and gently blended it with my fingers. I applied MAC Gesso eyeshadow on top of it. I drew a fine black line above the crease to achieve an editorial look, using a fine angled eyebrow brush. I then lined her eyes using a white liquid eyeliner by NYX. I asked my model to look up so I can draw a fine line underneath her lower lash line. After that I lined highlighter this line with the same NYX white eyeliner and applied two coats of MAC Haute and Naughty Too Black Mascara.

The finished look

Conclusion:  

It is quite important to understand and to be able to analyse the model's skin and the tones of the face in a different way. Rather than concentrating on colour usage, and colour correcting you as a makeup artist have to think about different textures and tones, because colours won't show in black and white photos. Using a pure white liquid liner is very effective for b&w photography in my opinion. Next time I will make sure to finish the lips as well as it would have definitely made the whole look come together but unfortunately I ran out of time. 
I was planning on doing a black and white ombre lip, similar to the below images:

Inspiration for lips

Inspiration for lips

Reference:

Waddell, C. (2012) Beauty retouching [Online] Available at: http://inspirationhut.net/inspiration/20-incredible-lip-art-examples/
(Accessed: 31 January 2016)
pinterest.com (No Date) 30 Beautiful Examples of Self Portrait Photography [Online] Available at: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/320248223483296542/
(Accessed: 31 January 2016)