While makeup artists are first and foremost artists, they also need to be businesspeople. Makeup artists need to be talented, confident, and charismatic, as well as effective entrepreneurs who are able to effectively market their talents. To begin, you will need to find ways to gain experience, develop effective work habits, create a business system, and build a portfolio and resume. Eventually, you will want to secure agency representation.
Your success is completely up to you. This means you need to attract and keep clients, develop and maintain several portfolios and a resume, handle the business effectively, and stay current.
A portfolio is a book in which you keep photographs of all your work as a makeup artist. The book can be low-cost plastic or high-end leather with your name engraved on it.
The first step in finding work is developing a great portfolio you can show to potential employers. Having professional photographs taken of your work can be prohibitively expensive and is probably not worth the investment when you are first starting out. Instead, try to find an aspiring photographer who might also like to have photos for his or her own book, and help each other out.
Call every modeling agency and ask if you can do makeup for testing. Testing is when a model, photographer, hairdresser, and makeup artist all do a shoot for free to show others their work. The payment is a photo for your portfolio. It’s also an excellent way to learn how to build rapport with a team at a photo shoot—an important lesson, because the same team will often work together repeatedly on jobs.
After the test, getting pictures from the photographer can sometimes be a challenge. It is up to you to confirm when the pictures will be ready to view. Set a date to pick out your own shots, and crop them if needed. Since most photographs are now digital, you can collect and store them on your computer. Prints can be made in a lab or with your own printer.
Your book should include at least fifteen amazing test shots before you show it around. Whenever possible, use professional models and photographers. Amateur work is quickly evident. Once you begin to find paid work, you will be able to include tear sheets (published work) from magazines, book covers, television commercials, and other jobs. You can begin looking for agency representation when you have at least ten to fifteen tear sheets that show a variety of work. Building a portfolio takes time. It will take at least six to nine months of consistent work to develop a book that you can show to clients. Once you have the book together, you need to show it to everyone— photographers, other artists, producers, and art directors. Get their advice, and listen to it. Thank them for their time and help.