A Guide to Underpainting by HoloGrave Cosmetics®
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Quickly learn if underpainting is the correct technique for you and how to make heavier cream and liquid products be less intense or intimidating to work with for those who do not want a full "makeup" makeup look. Give underpainting a try to see if it works for you and at the end, you can still place your powders on top as usual.
Underpainting will work best with bolder pigment as your underpainting layer and a lighter to medium coverage foundation on top. Full coverage can still work with some practice on blending, but will easily fully cover what you have laid down and therefore may be a little harder to work with. Underpainting can also help build confidence in your blending and placement skills. You can cover up as much as you need, and therefore you can be a bit more experimental in technique, colors used, and placement to the point where you could even fully cover up what you painting if you were truly unhappy with it.
It's my favorite way to play when you don't have time to ruin your makeup for the day. What's even better, is it makes you able to use liquid and cream products even if you're using a powder foundation. Just simply go a little more light-handed with the underpainting and place your powder foundation on top. This opens the door for new forms of products since creams and liquids cannot easily be placed on top of powders.
Who is Underpainting for?
Underpainting is for anyone who has an interest in using liquid or cream products and wants a more natural "lit from within" look to their face. Products look closer to being part of your skin or bone structure rather than laid on top.
You can also use underpainting as a technique and then still build up the look afterwards with powders, ect for a more bold look. Underpainting makes it very easy to control how intense color products are on your face since liquids and creams can be highly pigmented and a little daunting.
It works very well for those who have issues laying foundation all over their face and it caking up on them quickly. This method allows for a much smaller amount to be used and less overall layers of product. People will oiler skin like myself also see some improvements with this. When my skin is fully covered, my oil production skyrockets and I feel like I am melting. Less layers means more breathability for the skin and less added oils from having to use foundation all over.
Who is it not for?
Those who struggle with a lot of acne, uneven skintone, ect and want a very high coverage foundation may struggle or not be a match for underpainting. I always encourage you to still play and see if it works for you. You may find that you like how much lighter it feels, that just maybe it might improve acne if it's related to heavy layers used daily, or the blush and contour and all of that does still cover unevenness. Anything is possible, so always be open to playing and testing methods, you could stumble on the perfect one for you, but if it doesn't work for you, then that's completely alright too.
How to get started?
Prep your face by doing your skincare for the day and ending with a moisturizer that's had time to really soak in. I'm sticking to just my oil control moisturizer here, but you can begin with a primer if you're most comfortable using one.
We start in this tutorial with a liquid blush. Any products in liquid form that are highly pigmented, I recommend placing them on a mixing palette or the back of your had and spreading them out. You then go in with a dense brush, mine had a slight angle to it and I lightly dip it in to the spread out product, diffusing it on the brush. This avoids a large amount of product being at the center of the brush or tons of product being on the face and requiring a lot of blend out. It's always easier to add more than try to take away.
We blend this in with the brush, using a stippling (tapping) motion and I move onto contour/bronzer. With the contour/bronzer and even blush, if it's a cream stick rather than liquid, I do find you can easily apply it to the face directly without too much worry of going overboard, but you can still use the back of hand trick or swiping the brush on the stick to be able to control this product in a gradual way as well.
We are placing this in our usual areas. At this point, we are still using a fluffy, but very dense brush like for foundation and stippling to blend. Concealer can be placed and blended out just as normally done in any standard routine.
At this point, it should look quite intense, but will be covered and blended soon. You can now take your liquid foundation in ideally a lighter or medium coverage and take a smaller dense brush and begin slowly placing it around the places we laid all the color products and slowly blending into it. Blend until you have your desired coverage of the underpainted products and finish your routine as normal with powders.