What the Fine Arts Masters can teach about everyday makeup

Rembrandt’s paintings are known for their dramatic, but realistic, use of light and darkness known as chiaroscuro. This technique consists of a small triangle of light that lands on the shadowed cheek, just beneath the eye, whenever the light source comes from above and to one side. Technically, this isn’t something Rembrandt invented. It is simply part of nature, but he paid enough attention to notice and apply it to his paintings. The spot of light doesn’t go in the same place every time, requiring careful attention and detailing by the artist. 

When it comes to makeup, what works on one face may not work so well on the next face. As with Rembrandt and his paintings, we should be careful to not only place the cheek highlighter where the YouTube tutorial indicates, but to consider where light naturally hits our faces. The Old Masters worked within the rules of fine arts. Here’s how to borrow four of these rules and apply them to our faces.

Read your proportions 

Classical portrait painters divided the face into thirds: hairline to browbone, browbone to nose tip, nose tip to chin. Find this divide on yourself with a ruler before you touch a single brush. If your lower third runs long, resist the highlighter down the center of the chin; it will only stretch what’s already stretched. If your midface is short, keep contour soft under the cheekbone rather than heavy, so the eye doesn’t stall there. The goal is to work with your proportions so your makeup balances out your natural contours and beauty.

Shadow before color

Painters block a face in shadow and highlight tones, often a neutral gray or umber, long before they mix a single warm tone. Skipping this step in your makeup routine leaves even a gorgeous color just sitting on top of the skin instead of shaping it. The fix: contour in a cool, neutral taupe, not a warm bronzer. Bronzer reads as color; it can’t do the structural work of an actual shadow. Set your contour and highlight first; a good trick to check if this is done correctly is to take a selfie in the black-and-white filter, and once you are happy with the contrast, apply color with a layer in blush or bronzer.

An extra step that can be helpful is to use a base primer, which is designed precisely with the fine art painting rules in mind. It is not as attractive to the eye as other beauty products, but this green cream is designed to do the same thing the neutral grays or umber do to a canvas. 

Pick one feature to finish

Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring focuses on the earring and the glossy edge of the lip. Everything else dissolves into soft shadow, which is exactly why your eye goes straight to those two points. A face with a bold lip, sharp liner, heavy contour, and full highlighter all fighting for attention doesn’t read as more finished. It reads as noise. Pick one feature to bring fully into focus. If it’s the eyes, keep the lip and everything else soft. If it’s a statement lip, let the eyeliner blur to a smudged pencil instead of a sharp wing. And, match your blush and lip to your own flush, not to whatever shade is trending.

Let your edges do the work

Leonardo da Vinci built the mystery in the Mona Lisa‘s expression almost entirely out of sfumato, soft transitions with no hard line marking where one plane of the face ends and the next begins. The same logic applies to blending. Soften contour and blush into the skin with small circular motions, ideally with a damp sponge or fingers, so there’s no visible line. Then pick which edge is going to be the focal point. It could be a wing liner or bold lips, so the face still has a point of focus instead of dissolving into softness everywhere at once.

Makeup tutorials give you a finished product fit for someone else’s face; these principles, in contrast, give you the tools to create a flattering and beautiful makeup look that fits your face just right.