By far, my favourite seasons are autumn and spring. I love the colours that these seasons bring, both in nature and in fashion, and prefer the often crisp but bright and temperate days during the Spring and Autumn months to the harshness of temperature that comes with summer and winter. For me, autumn has always been about newness, whether it be a new age (my birthday is in September) or moving into a new school year with a new bag and pencil case (as was always the case when I was little- I was stationery obsessed!). I also like that if you use the Americanism for autumn (fall) then you have two seasons named after actions and these actions kind of sum up the seasons as a whole.
Anyway, I digress...this is a make-up blog not a high school English essay! What I’m getting at is that I really like autumn with all its rich colours and I had been thinking about doing some make-up based on the changing colours of leaves . My opportunity came when Karen Helle, who I had previously worked with on a stylist’s fashion shoot last month, asked me to do make-up and hair for her autumn themed shoot in the park. I had recently bought some new eyeshadows and lipsticks in suitably autumnal shades and was dying to try them out. My first model, Byony, was pale-skinned with blue eyes and dark hair with red streaks running through it. On her face, I used Illamasqua’s Skin Base foundation in shade 6, which I absolutely love because it provides a good coverage without looking heavy and photographs very well. On Bryony’s eyes, I used shades of orange, amber and brown to accentuate her blue eyes. I lined her eyes with a black pencil (rather than a liquid liner) and smudged it into the top and bottom lash lines for a softer finish, before applying mascara. I contoured Bryony’s cheeks with a matt brown pressed powder and then highlighted her cheekbones with a liquid highlighter. I added a soft pink blusher and some bronzer to warm up Bryony’s cheeks. Finally, I applied a nude colour to the lips.
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Model: Byrony
Photography: Karen Helle
MU/H: Donna Harris a.k.a. The Make-up Darling
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My second model, Tara, had Asian skin, dark eyes and dark hair. I used Smashbox Studio Skin 15 Hour Wear Foundation (shade 3.2) which I got a small sample of to try it out. I really liked this foundation – it went on really quickly and smoothly, photographed well and looked like the model was wearing no foundation at all. Tara had absolutely flawless skin anyway, so the last thing I wanted to do was stick a heavy foundation on her, so this one worked perfectly. I wanted to do both dark eyes and dark lips on Tara. I applied a black eyeshadow primer to Tara’s eyelid followed by a mixture of black and plum eyeshadows, which I also used to line the bottom lash line. I then added purple and gold eyeshadow to the middle of the eyelid to add more dimension to the eyes. I lined the eyes with a black eyeshadow to increase the smokiness and then added lots of mascara. I heavily contoured Tara’s face with a matt brown pressed powder and added a liquid highlighter to the top of her cheekbones, down her nose and on her cupid’s bow. Finally, I added a deep purple lipstick, which I made by mixing two shades of NYX lipstick (Pandora and Almost Black) together, and then lined the lips with black eyeliner for more definition before smudging the liner into the lipstick.
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Model: Tara
Photography: Karen Helle
MU/H: Donna Harris a.k.a. The Make-up Darling |
For both models, I wanted to keep the hair simple and quite ‘undone’, so I lightly backcombed their hair to add volume and sprayed in some hairspray at the roots.
I am really happy with the outcome and these photos will definitely go in my professional portfolio. Neither Bryony or Tara have done any professional modelling before but I think they could both have a career in the industry if they chose to. I am in awe of Karen’s ability to capture the beauty of nature in these photos, like the different colours in the bark of the tree behind Bryony’s head.
As always, thank you for reading this post and I would love to have your comments. You can also follow me on Twitter @donnaharris_mua or ‘Like’ my Facebook page.
