Tint

One chair · ninety minutes · you hold the brush

I do not do your face. I teach you to do your face.

You sit at the mirror, I sit beside you, and my hands stay on my side of the table. At the end you will have done it once badly, once better, and once on your own while I said nothing.

The three lessons
A close portrait of a woman with soft makeup around the eyes.

Ninety minutes

Always in this order, and the last twenty minutes are the reason it works.

0–20

Your bag, on the table

Everything you own, out, in the light. We keep what works, we bin what is four years old, and I write down what is actually missing.

20–45

Once, badly

You do it the way you do it at home, at your speed, while I watch and say nothing. This is the uncomfortable bit and it is where all the information is.

45–70

Once, differently

Same face, same products, four changes to how you are holding things. Most of what I teach is angle and pressure, not colour.

70–90

Once, alone

Wiped off, done again, no commentary. If you cannot do it without me in the room, the lesson has not worked and we book another one free.

Three lessons

All three are ninety minutes in the same chair. The difference is what we are trying to get you able to do.

A portrait of a woman with red hair and bold red lipstick.

The five-minute one

For a face you can do standing up, in a bathroom, before work, without thinking. Four products, and two of them you already own.

£75

A woman's face in profile against a dark background.

The evening one

Everything the first one is not: eyes that take fifteen minutes, a lip that stays on, and how to take it off without wrecking your skin at one in the morning.

£95

A portrait of a woman against a pink background.

Your own wedding

Two lessons and a rehearsal, six weeks apart, so that you do your own face on the day and it looks like your face. Cheaper than being made up, on purpose.

£240 for all three

Makeup brushes and compacts laid out flat on a pale surface.
A portrait with strong red lipstick, cropped wide.

Not for

Four things I say no to, including the one that would pay best.

Being made up
Not for a wedding, not for a party, not for photographs. There are six people within two miles who are excellent at it and I will give you all six names.
Bridal parties of eight
The money is very good and the room has one chair. What I will do is teach the eight of you, two at a time, over two evenings, which is better and nobody believes me until afterwards.
Anything sold on the day
Nothing is for sale in this room. You leave with a list, and the list has three prices on it including the cheapest one that works.
Under sixteens, without a conversation
Not a rule, a phone call first. Some of those lessons have been the best ones I have done and some of them should have been a different appointment entirely.

If you have had a bad experience in a chair like this — and a lot of people have — say so when you book. It changes how the first twenty minutes go.

What you take home

A photograph of your own face at each of the three stages, taken on your phone, and one sheet of paper. That is deliberately all of it.

The order you do things inwritten down

What to replace, and whenwith dates

What to stop buyingusually three things

Three prices for anything missingincluding the cheap one

A second lesson if it did not landfree

A pink display shelf of cosmetics bottles and tubes.
A flat arrangement of makeup products on a pale background.

Fourteen years, mostly backstage

Eleven years on shoots and three on a counter, which taught me that almost nobody needs another product and almost everybody is holding the brush at the wrong angle.

The studio is one room above a bike shop with a north window, which is the only lighting decision that matters and the reason there are no lamps.

Book the chair