How Do I Pick Colour?

Colour isn't always an easy thing to put together, and some people struggle with choosing the right colour to shadow and enhance their eyes.  The cosmetic industry over the last few years have started to provide products that already colour group shadows for you, but I have found that many of these colour groupings are rather boring sticking to colour palettes of brown, green and purple. 

The colour wheel is made up of many colours, shades and even tone, all starting off of the primary colours of Red, Blue and Yellow.  When I was in Makeup School my teacher made an excellent point of saying that realistically all you needed in your kit was these primary colours along with a white, and from these 3 colours and one tone you could create any colour.  Good advice considering the cost you can rack up if you want your makeup bag or kit to provide alot of options, especially as a make up artist.

As complex as understanding colour may seem when looking at the colour wheel, its actually pretty easy.  All you really have to remember is that the colour opposite the one you are trying to match is the best compliment to that colour.  Here is the colour wheel, following the colour wheel is an example of this rule.

Using the colour wheel above, lets say you have blue eyes.  look at the blue area of the wheel and then look at the colours displayed opposite of the blue.  So your colour choice would be reds, oranges including varying shades like pinks and peach.  Brown eyes have it the easiest, although brown eyes can wear any colour and shade, blues, greens and purples work the best to make a brown eye really pop.  Although brown is not part of the colour wheel due to it being a compliment colour, it is a warm colour, therefore if it was going to be on the wheel it would be on the side of orange, yellow and even green, since many times the colour brown is made up of these colours.

No matter what the rules are, rules were made to be broken, and at the end of the day if you feel comfortable in it and love it, you can wear any colour you want, regardless of how they are decorated, eyes are the window to the soul, so whether bare or coloured they are always beautiful.

Fall 2011 Trends

I am a child of the 80's, in Jr. High I was rimming my eyes with shimmery sea foam blue eyeliner on the bottom and kohl black on top, because I was young I leaned more towards the frosty pink lipstick then the deep magenta and fuchsias some older girls use to wear.  Well, guess what?  As a very well known horror movie of my generation use to say, "They're Back!"

Fall 2011 seems to be nodding back to the 80's but with a more contemporary ingredient.  NY Fashion Week had its runways filled with clean, creamy dewey faces with bold lips and eyes matching the current clothing trend  where it seems low key, ethereal. Read "Can you feel it?" for clothing trends.

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Lipstick at Sephora
Eye Shadow by NYX

The palette is cool yet some may thing its warm. the face is clean with little foundation yet creamy, cream blushes are applied with the fingers, so they are worked into the skin giving a subtle glow, lips are coloured from the lightest and palest purple to the deepest wine without any lip liner.  Eyes are smokey again in greys and muted blues, with just a slight tinge of shimmer, yet with the right shade of lipstick the eyes may be shades of burgundy and shades of mustard.  Also gone is eyeliner, its still there, but the intent is to just enhance the eye to stand out without noticing the product. Fake but natural look lashes can replace the heavy look and feel of mascara, but still helps to define the eye and create size.  The best way to be inspired this season, go outside, lie on a patch of grass and look around you, see the leaves changing colours, yet they are still holding onto some of their green.  Look at ripened berries and look at the cool glow of nature, that's what you want.