As with any job, there are things about your job that you love, and there are things about your job that you hate. And anyone who has worked in customer service, retail, or any service industry, you know the one thing you can end up hating the most about your job…is the people you interact with on a daily basis.
I love being a makeup artist, don’t get me wrong. However, the customer isn’t always right (sorry to hit you with that reality), and often times they’re annoying AF. After years of providing makeup services, and lamenting with other artists, I know I’m not alone in my sentiments that I’m about to share with you.
Here are 5 things all makeup artists wish you would stop doing.
BEING LATE/NOT BEING PREPARED
Not only is your makeup artist an artist, they’re a project manager. We schedule everything down to the minute. It only takes being off schedule by 15 minutes to ruin the entire flow of events for a day. Your appointment time is your appointment time. If your appointment time is at 9am, that doesn’t mean you are to shower, brush your teeth, eat, or run to the bank after you let me in at 9am. A 9am appointment means your artist will be there at 8:45am and will begin painting promptly at 9am. Be ye ready. Please and thanks. Furthermore, if things happen to be off schedule (as a fault of your own) dare not rush your artist.
MINIMIZING THE LEVEL OF EFFORT REQUIRED
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard as an artist “well how much/how long for this? I only want something simple”. Excuse me miss, who are you to tell an artist how much effort or how much time goes into creating a look that if we’re being honest, you can’t do yourself? Whether you want a clean look, or a cut crease with a smokey eye, there is still effort and skill exerted to execute the look. There is an assumption that “clean” beauty looks don’t take time, but I implore you to ask any makeup artist how many products and how much time is needed to make some folks look as if they don’t have any makeup on. Go ahead and ask, I’ll wait for your results.
MULTI-TASKING
During your makeup appointment, please allot that time to get your makeup done, and nothing else. This is not the time to be on your phone, eating food, getting your children dressed, answering emails, painting your nails (I’ve seen it all. Trust me). Please take the time to luxuriate and get your makeup done. And to think, if you sit still and let us do our job, the sooner you can get up.
TELLING US HOW TO PAINT/HOW SOMEONE ELSE PAINTS
I don’t care what you saw on YouTube. I don’t care how the guru posted her makeup on Instagram. I don’t care about that one time you went to a department store and sat in a chair under fluorescent lighting and the girl who you can’t even remember her name, used xyz product on you. When you book with an artist, you are booking their skill and their expertise. If that is something you question, then you should have booked with someone else. Feel free to tell your artist what it is you would like to see, but please, don’t tell them how to do it.
HAVING UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
The top 3 reference pictures any makeup artist gets are: Jennifer Lopez (you don’t have her cheek bones), Kim Kardashian (you don’t have her naturally large eyes and long lashes) and Rihanna (you don’t have her epic cupid’s bow). Let me also state these are reference pictures shown by potential clients who claim to not want to look like they have a lot of makeup on (*insert the strongest of side eyes here). You need to be realistic that since you don’t have the same facial features as your inspiration photos, you cannot expect the makeup to look exactly the same. To be clear, a reference photo is just that. A reference. When you go to paint and sip night with your girls, everyone has the same goal, but no one’s painting ends up looking like the other. Get it?
