By Natalia Zurawska
I have been a professional makeup artist for the last 10 years. I absolutely love my career as well as making people laugh and smile. I also love to read and write.
When I was starting out, I experienced many trials and tribulations and realized that there are so many problems that may be so easily resolved. Whether it is beauty or production related, I have learned so much and love to share that wealth of knowledge with others.
Everyone loves simplicity, easy problem solving, looking and feeling their best as well as saving time and money. For that reason I wanted to provide some tips about how you can look and feel your best whether it’s for an author photo shoot, an in-person reading or a book signing appearance.
Often, author photos for the back or inside of books are done in black and white. And it might not at first be obvious of the subtle difference that photography in this two-toned medium might make. A great make-up tip to use with black and white photography is to use stone colours, beiges, browns and greys. Those colours tend to work best because in black and white, reds can come off looking extremely harsh.
Another great tip when getting head shots done is to focus on looking like yourself, only enhanced. The photos on a book can last a lifetime so it is great to look and feel like yourself.
Every woman has experienced buying a powder and have it shatter a day later. Argh! Don’t throw it out. Collect as much of the powder as possible and put it back in the container. Spray rubbing alcohol until a paste is created. Leave the lid open for the makeup to dry. This also works well for any powder makeup such as eye-shadows, and blush. Tada! It is back together once it dries. The alcohol also sanitizes it. Just make sure to use 70% or over.
Easy, fun, simple!
My belief is that every woman should look and feel her best all while saving time and money. When you look great, you feel great and it radiates into all aspects of life.
Natalia Zurawska is a Toronto Based makeup hair and SPFX artist, beauty blogger and author of I’m Not Making This Up and How To Work With a Makeup Artist.
Natalia’s website, ColourChameleon, includes many more great tips relayed in both articles and videos, sharing her many years of insights as a professional makeup artist.
I really like it when a book has a picture of the author. It helps me put a face to a name and connect with the author. My wife wants to go into makeup school, so she would be interested to see some of the techniques used for photos of authors.