Thanks to social media, anyone can be a ‘makeup artist’ these days. The Internet is flooded with cut crease tutorials, and pinterest boards of the perfect smokey eye. Every tween, teen, and millennial has at least one post on Instagram of a bold lip or festival glitter face. And lets not forget the growing trend of brows, brows, brows! We cannot get enough of them. Beauty and makeup is this generation’s expression of empowerment, which can include anything from clean, fresh skin through to drag makeup. We are using it to push boundaries and explore ourselves in ways that are exciting and important. But what does it actually take to make being a makeup artist your full time job?
For a long time many people’s first foray into makeup is watching family members and gazing in awe, wondering when you would get a chance to play with those magical transformative products! And most of the time your first application looks a little something like this:
Adorable. But we have all seen those makeup fail memes and they are quite frankly, terrifying.
These days however we have access to tutorials, blogs, vlogs, insta stories and posts and pinterest boards to teach us the many ways of beauty and makeup. Teens have a veritable bevvy of information at their fingertips and are producing some looks that put our adolescent attempts at eyeliner to shame!
That being said, being able to do a killer look on your own face and being able to produce the same outcome on someone else’s face is a VERY different thing. And that is where the artist part of the job title comes into play. It takes skill, practice, training, persistence and personality to become a makeup artist. Half of this business is about having the ability to make people feel calm, safe, comfortable and good about themselves, whether that is for a special event like a wedding, or you have a client in the chair for hours of prosthetics application. If you can make people feel at ease and pick up on the client’s needs, then you will likely be booked again.
The other half is of course, the makeup. So how do you get the skills to become the Makeup Artist you always dreamed of?
What Can I Do?
Some people prefer to learn by watching tutorials online and creating looks in their own space, but in my experience nothing quite beats being in a classroom with hands on practice with an experienced makeup artist. With multiple trainers with different techniques and specialities, makeup courses offer a safe space to learn, practice, make mistakes and learn how to fix them (which is so incredibly important and something you just cannot learn online).
There is no right or wrong way to apply makeup when it comes to creativity, but there is when it comes to safety, both yours and your client’s. Learning how to safely and hygienically apply makeup is another skill you will learn in a classroom.
It’s also a great place to start your network. The beauty industry is a huge community and the more people you know and work with, the broader your job prospects become, and that network starts right there in the classroom too. There are so many makeup courses available to suit everyone’s passion. There are plenty of short makeup courses at TAFE and independent beauty schools, however I found that The Australian Academy of Cinemagraphic Makeup had all the solutions to my makeup career goals! They offer short courses in Basic Makeup, Intro to Prosthetics, Lash & Brow courses and the Diploma of Screen and Media in Specialist Makeup Services, which is a 12 month course that covers makeup and hair for film, television, fashion, editorial and special effects and is the highest qualification you can receive in Australia.
So what are you waiting for? Go out and do your research and start your new career in Makeup today!