MUA School

As some of you may or may not know I am in school at the moment training to become a qualified makeup artist. I have been doing my course for 3 months now and am learning so much. When I first started I didn’t quite know what to expect so I thought I would write a bit about what we are learning and what my course goes through. Hopefully it gives people some ideas about what else is out there and may help them in deciding what to do or how to go about things.

The course I am doing is ITEC registered. ITEC stands for International Therapy Examination Council. So it is an international qualification that covers a range of beauty and therapy courses. This means that after I’m all finished and passed my exams I will be an internationally qualified makeup artist which would be handy to have if I ever decide to travel overseas and work.

The course covers Retail, Cosmetology and Theatre, Fashion and Media makeup. It is very intense and we are learning lots of new things every week. On Tuesdays we will usually do retail which will soon be Cosmetology then for the rest of the week we will be doing either makeup, special effects or working on our case studies. We are always doing something new each week and cover quite a range of looks.

For special effects so far we have covered things like wounds, scars, bruises, acne, scratches, grazes and will soon be doing burns. In makeup we have done things like day look, bridal and evening looks. Learning about face shapes, colour matching and different techniques. We are now moving onto the more creative and history side doing 1920’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, Fairy, 18th Century, WWII going onto mime and Renaissance next week. Thats just to name a few and we can cover up to two a week. One day we will go over the history of either the era or the makeup and what the makeup was like. Then we will usually have a demo showing us what the makeup looked like so then we can go practice the look. Then on the next day we have makeup lesson we will sit the practical assessment where we do the look properly and style and photograph it. Our marks are based on not only the makeup and techniques but also our appearance and client (which are our class mates) care. Once we have done the practical side of each look we have to do the case study part which includes a lot of typing and often done at home. We usually have to write about the history of either the look or era, write step by step instructions on how to achieve it and often other things that change between each look. We then have to include sketches and drawings which for say the 1970’s would be men and womens clothing, hair and accessories. There is a lot to keep up with but it is good information to have and learn.

I am really enjoying it and there is so much to learn. We will work in pairs for each look and then swap around with others in the class so we can get experience working on different people and skin types which is good. There is a lot of putting on and taking off makeup and you soon get used to going up town on breaks with some different makeup looks.

If you were looking into doing something I would recommend doing a course that was ITEC registered if possible. Not only is is widely recognised but there is also lots of good hygiene rules that you get into a routine of following. Which a lot I’ll be honest I never thought about prior to starting this course.

If you want to follow my week by week journey I’ll be trying to post more photos to my Instagram account of the final looks. So you are more than welcome to come say hi and ask any questions there. (Click here to find my Instagram)

I hope this was of some help or just an interesting read about what I’ve been up to lately. I’m also very much open to any tips or advice you all may have as its good to learn off each other. I am still very new to this and there is always new things to learn.

Love, Me