What I Learnt at a Paddy McGurgan Masterclass

This week I attended a Paddy McGurgan Masterclass for Note Cosmetics in Tullygass House in Ballymena and it was a great night! Paddy McGurgan is one of the UK's top makeup artists and he had a lot of tips and tricks to give at the masterclass, so here is some of the new tips that I learnt. 

Priming your skin correctly is important

Paddy started with taking about how important skin care is for before your makeup. Getting your skin ready for foundation by moisturising your skin and priming can make a huge difference to how your foundation will sit on your skin. 

Paddy used a mixture of different primers on his model that suited her skin type. The model had combination type skin, and so for her, he applied two different primers, a matifying primer in her t-zone area and an illuminating primer on the other areas of her face. This made the skin look amazing! Very glowy but not in the wrong areas. This priming method then made the rest of the makeup on top look very natural and glowy as you could see the illuminating primer shining through. 
This is definitely a technique that I will be using in my makeup routine from now as I also have combination skin. 

Less is more

I hear this all the time and just think 'yeah, yeah, I need tonnes of concealer to hide these bags', but Paddy discussed how building up the concealer in thin layers is more effective than having those bright white triangles of concealer under your eyes that take years to blend. Using thin layers and building up if necessary will prevent the cakeiness you can get under your eyes, especially if the skin under your eyes is dry, tonnes of concealer will cling to those dry areas. 

I will admit, I am a serial over concealer, so I am going to try using this technique, which will save me a lot of product.

Use a light hand

While watching Paddy apply the products on to his model, I noticed that he uses a very light hand to blend in the product. This is a technique I have known makeup artists to use, but I can't help but near dig a hole into my face when I'm blending, I think I do this to save time but I can't imagine that using a light hand would take too much more time and I found that this made the makeup on the model just stink into her skin and look more skin-like rather than just a mask of foundation. 

So from now on I'll be applying my makeup with a feather. 

Tap tap tap 

The last tip I want to discuss is the technique Paddy used when applying bronzer. This was something I had not seen done before and I found it so interesting to watch and he made it look so easy. When applying bronzer, rather than swiping it over the cheeks in a back and forth motion, Paddy just gently tapped the bronzer onto the skin. This avoids the makeup underneath being disrupted and moved around and gave the model a very natural colour and glow to the face. 

He literally done this in 2 seconds, I was shook. 

                                                                                                                                        

This was my first masterclass I have attended and I can say that it was really interesting and I definitely learnt a lot. It was also great to see Paddy McGurgan doing makeup as I had never seen him work his magic before, and i thought he really used the products well. He is also hilarious!!