Less is More: Using makeup to fake a younger look

Hello all- hope you’ve been enjoying your summer. I have, and I’ve been thinking about quick techniques to maintain our youthful glow during the sweaty, warm days of summer.

Think about your own makeup routine. We’ve all been there; you’ve got your makeup routine down pat. You’ve gotten tons of compliments on your shade of lipstick and you could put your eye makeup on in your sleep. Then one day your eye liner is smearing, melting, and your foundation is breaking down and settling into your lines by 10am. It is now is taking you twice as long to look half as good.

I want to talk about probably the cheapest way to appear younger, with makeup techniques.  I need you to think like an artist does. When an artist starts to sketch an object, they always look for the “light source”. Is the light coming from straight above? From the right? From below? When you know where it comes from, you can see or draw the shadows and the highlights. In my theatre/college days, we would spend a whole semester practicing making ourselves look older, younger, monster-y just with white and brown eyeshadow.

We were taught that when you apply your makeup you need to be conscious of the same light source principle, creating shadows and highlights and can therefor “fake” higher eyelids, slimmer neck, etc.

So first we need to understand what a youthful appearance looks like biologically:

• ·         full lips
• ·         tight neck
• ·         high eyelids (no drooping)
• ·         smooth skin, no wrinkles
• ·         same skin tone, no blotches or broken blood vessels
• ·         nose is turned up
• ·         cheek bones are prominent
• ·         eyes are wide, lashes are lush

So now how do we fake these youthful features?

1.   Good skin care-you can only cover up so much
2. The older you get, the less makeup you should wear.

a.       Less foundation- replace with a tinted moisturizer

b.      Less eyeliner- pencil over liquid. And if you do wear eyeliner, only wear it on the top- going out above the eye- it will make your eyes look bigger

c.       NEVER put mascara on the lower lashes- it draws attention to your crows feet.

d.      No glitter eyeshadow- wear matte or shear. Glitter sneaks into the wrinkles and ages you ten years.

e.      If you are wearing a powder, make sure it’s not matte; try a mineral bronzer or highlighter.

• 3.     Skip the lipstick all together and go with a light colored gloss. Gloss gives the appearance of fuller lips. If you really want some full pout- put some highlighter (white eyeshadow, white pencil) on the bow of your lips and the middle of the bottom lip – we’re pretending that the light source is coming from above.
• 4.      Have deep wrinkles or folds? Fill those shadows with highlighter (see illustration) I use Physician Formula Color Corrector.
• 5.      Have a neck wobble?  Use some bronzer and shade in your neck and make it “disappear”- not too much though, you don’t want to look like you have a flesh eating disease;)
• 6.      As we get older, our nose gets bigger. To fake a smaller nose, put some shadow or bronzer on the sides of your nose, and a dot of highlighter on the bottom tip.
• 7.      Get a youthful eye by curling your lashes and putting highlighter dots on both corners of our eye- this will make them expand. For a fancy night, put on natural looking fake lashes. I know that sounds like an oxy-moron but lashes have come a long way and it really is the “magic “ beauty tip. All mascara commercials have them wearing fake lashes and all tv shows have them wearing falsies.

This looks like a lot of makeup- but you will just barely graze your
bronzer/highlighter brush in these areas.

            Make sure you blend, blend, blend! No masks or war paint stripes allowed.

      All of these recommended  highlights and shadows assume that your light source is coming at you overhead. If you go out to a place with nothing but flashlights on the floor, I can't promise you the same results. Maybe you'd have to switch your lights and darks? I'll defer to an expert on that one.

Most of the time you’ll see me out and about with Garnier BB(beauty bombshell) primer moisturizer,undereye concealer, curled lashes with waterproof mascara (non waterproof was starting to smear at the end of the day.... probably droopy eyes;), gloss and a smile.  Does anyone out there have some killer makeup tips? Share!