Airbrush Makeup -The Evolution of Beauty

What ever happened to Fay Wray? We've lost her in the tunnels of time, but the new starlet captured in these beastly arms is just as gorgeous as Wray ever was- and we've done it all with a little bit of air! Sounds light? You're right! Airbrushing! The flawless coverage and natural translucency that airbrush makeup offers is a huge step in the evolution of makeup art.

When the average person hears the word airbrush, we think of a car being painted, or the final stages of prints for magazines that are finessed into perfection. Today, these processes are accomplished digitally. The model's print (who already happens to be stunningly gorgeous) is color corrected, her teeth are made whiter, her pupils enhanced, her lashes made thicker, her skin tweaked to perfection, her legs thinned out and elongated. It's quite an artificial process and it leads me to the conclusion that I ...or any farm animal in Bruce County, for that matter... could probably model for Vogue. However, what would you say if some of these adjustments could be made on your face instead of on your picture? I said prove it!

As I watched the tiny droplets leave the airbrush gun and dance in the air before landing on the subject's face I was intrigued. I was sold when I saw a pretty great result dry into flawlessness. "Lets just wait a minute and watch the paint dry to see the final result," the demo makeup artist whispered. (It reminded me of an episode on the original Star Trek with William Shatner hanging out with a colony of women taking "the beauty pill " and watching all the "Plain Janes" turning into sexy amazons with the blink of an eye).

Spending time with the system I discovered the secrets that airbrushing holds. The airbrush gun takes the tiniest, most fragile foundation molecule and oxidizes it into a high opacity. In other words, one can wear the sheerest of sheer foundations and have virtually perfect skin. When I took the airbrush foundation and tried to apply it by traditional methods (a sponge and my finger tips) it was too watery to work with. Yet the same foundation passed through the air system takes on a new characteristic and a strength that I have not seen in the twenty-six years I've been painting faces.

Our model, a mother of two in her mid-thirties is posing for a "beauty and the beast" concept photo shoot. Genny has had her foundation, contour, and eye shadow air brushed. This photograph has been slightly lightened but is untouched. Genny typically has darkness under her eyes, and an uneven skin tone.

THE PROS OF AIRBRUSH MAKEUP:

o Maximum coverage with minimal product

o Delivers a natural and translucent look

o Great for oily skin

o Fantastic for overly active skin that tends to "eat" makeup up

o Lasts ten to twelve hours - a bride's best friend

o Does not require powder, which can be ageing

o Some foundation formulations are silicone based.

o Silicone is as smooth as silk.

THE CONS OF AIRBRUSH MAKEUP:

o Set up fee for airbrush technician: $500 to $800. Requires a skilled technician/artist or a lot of home practice.

o Airbrush Make-up session $80 to $200

o Beauty airbrush is slowly making its way into the television and the film industry. With the transition of high definition television, it's definitely a makeup artist's and television personality's new best friend.

To view a video clip of airbrush makeup, log on to http://promakeupart.com/video.shtml and click on " fashion air brush".

Robert Closs is the Founder and Managing Director of The School of Professional Makeup in Toronto, Canada. The School of Professional Makeup is one of the premier makeup schools in Canada. Rob has provided fashion advice, makeup tips and beauty tips for almost 25 years.

The Evolution Of Beauty

A raccoon is a beautiful animal just as a penguin is. This may be in my own viewing, but we will all agree that we would rather choose human beauty assuming we were faced with a choice. The beauty of a woman or that of a baby seems to always capture even the deadliest heart, we may not appreciate it but we cannot deny it.

I will attempt to draw your attention to subtle parts, anatomy if you wish, of the human body that we might have never considered as part of the human beauty.

A lot of times, lovers often use animals beautified in feathers or colorful hairs to buttress beauty, but ask the panda or the canary about beauty. From the head down to the toes of a human being, from the curves that make us attractive to the beards that make us scary and yet, surprisingly, attractive, we will see that the human is the peak of the earth's beauty. A priceless piece of art, if you ask me. But of all these, let us turn our attention to the human hand.

The hand is the part of the upper limb that extends from the wrist joints to the tip of the fingers. It consists of numerous joints, bones, muscles, tendons and skin among a few. Five fingers, usually, project forward when the shoulder joint is held at approximately 90 degrees angle with the rest of the body. The fingers have been named and with the shoulder as described above, on the left, the names follows from the part closest to the body at natural position:

the thumb

the index finger

the middle finger

the ring finger

the small or pinky

Of all living creatures with hands, only the human have the ability to appose the hand. It means only man has the ability to touch the pinky with the thumb on the same hand. This may not sound remarkable but consider a hand without a thumb. You may attempt to hold back your thumb when you attempt to carry a bucket or write or even shake a friend.

It is the apposition of the hand that gives us the advantage of being able to perform highly skilled tasks like surgeries, washing our clothes, shaking friends to show affection even tying our shoe laces with ease. Besides the brain, the hand of a human being is the most developed. Think of people who read brail, the pianist, the guitarist, the driver, the doctor, the cook, the typist you name it. Think of your self in the toilet, how would it feel to have the hands of a gorilla with an attempt to clean up after visiting.

It is certainly not the largest or strongest of the human body but it sure is a display of beauty. Watch your hand when you type or watch it while painting, writing with a pen or watch the pianist play. See the smoothness of the motions it makes, the gentleness of its movements, watch how the joints glide and flex without one bone standing on the way of the order. This is surely a miracle of harmony.

Think of your self and the one you love. feel how gentle and pleasant it feels with their hands on your face or body.

You know, it doesn't look all that important but it sure performs most of the things our brains generate. you wouldn't be reading this if I had no hands or hands with disorganised bones and joints. If it were not smooth to type, I will only speak and nothing more.

Now that we have considered the hand, let us consider something else. When you see a beautiful car, with strong engines and incredible speed, it tells you that someone thought really hard and quite effective too to build that. A random combination of events occurring merely as chances would have lead us to having fingers that are independent of each other, but on the contrary, our fingers work together. My point is, random occurrences and the need for survival will not have let the so called ape man develop this finely controlled and complex part of the human. In fact, the birds who had no hands or the gazelle would not have survived evolutions explanations. The argument may take longer than this to drive the point but the summary is, man had a well developed hand because someone gave him that. It was for a purpose, it was purposeful because someone thought it out, took quality time and made it the way it is to suit the kind of life man will live.

This doesn't make sense to our rational minds but that doesn't mean that we are products of random occurrences.