This is for everyone... but also for all the olives out there who went for 26 years without understanding their undertone, I know you! The struggle was so real, like real enough that I gave up on makeup entirely for awhile
@@Mrsjdw4 Story of my life smh. I recently discovered that I am a warm olive and it suddenly made sense why the foundation shade never seemed right and it either washed me out or was too warm and made me orange.
This technique reminds me of how oil painters, like Bouguereau, would build skin tones with many different colors. His results were not only realistic, but vibrant! Excellent job!
Hey olives! Lisa Eldridge added a few more olive-toned foundations to her line. They're freakin' glorious. (Shades 2.5, 9, 9.5, 16, 23, 35, so there are a ton of options.)
I have a vision of Alex being a teacher, walking thru her students while we are all mixing vigorously, trying to find our own color!😅 Enjoyed this video...fascinating!
@AlexandraAnele Right! And I might have a chance of getting better than a C grade because my teacher would be so dope! Seriously tho, have learned a lot from your videos & have stepped outside of my comfort box as a result. 👏
I would 100% take her class! What a great idea and it could be a “lightbulb” moment for Alex…..You Tube should make her more money, she is one to watch and her approach is like no one else on You Tube……❤️
I’m imagining her class would be a requirement for all companies who make any sort of complexion products. Those who produce limited shade ranges would go straight to detention. 😂🌸🐝
Oh gosh this problem is the bane of my makeup existence. I'm fair! I tan easily! I burn easily that fades to tan! My undertones are very yellow! I also have a lot of red due to blemishes! Oh no, this shade oxidized ORANGE on me! The veins in my wrist are somehow blue, green, AND purple! It's a mess.
I feel you... We all have blue, green and purple tiny veins in our wrists, even magenta-burgundy! I don' t know who had the brilliant idea to chose this area🤷🏻♀️. Find the bigger ones, especially on chest, breasts, biceps or inner tights where the skin is extra thin and probably less tanned😉. If your tan is a roller coaster, buy two foundations: your very palest shade and another one a bit darker than your most tanned moment. Mix then in different proportions and done. Hope it helps. 🧛🏻♀️🖤
Girl….. Same to All of this! And I look good in all of the “seasons” and gold and silver and rose gold look good on me. I have stumped hairstyles when they were trying swatches on me trying to decide if my highlights should be warm or cool undertones and they said both worked. 🤷🏻♀️ And, yet, not everything works, maybe wise and shade wise.
Back in the past century, this was the first thing you were asked to do at the MAC job interview. _"Try to make her look fabulous just with this and no tools"_ was the second. "This"= an unsharpened Spice or Stone lip liner. Being selected was The Hunger Games Make Up Edition😅. 🧛🏻♀️🖤
Green/yellow undertones unite. For years...nothing worked on my skin. Too red, too orange. I got so frustrated. It's nice to have so many more options now. And maybe I'll mix something myself. You've inspired me.
Right? I learn so much from Alex's videos, like please explain every detail it's how we learn! And I agree I love her chilled out voice and way of speaking like we're all friends.
As a very pale white chick with blonde hair, blue eyes, and pinkish face, I spent a long time just grabbing the lightest shade available. When I realized that was making me look even more like a pink ghost I would try the next lightest shade, and look orange. So I mixed them and wondered why this peachy tone that looked like it would match, ended up too orange, too pink, too light, and too dark all at the same time. I read articles, and watched videos. I stared at my vein colors under sunlight and artificial lights. Finally I said screw it and just started color mixing from scratch. (As a fellow artist, it took me way to long to get to this point.) I was surprised by how much green ended up going into my mixes, and how gray and yellow the products would look on the palette, only to finally match my skin! I finally realized my skin tone is not "porcelain" or "light ivory". Apparently, Its sallow corpse. 😂
I'm sallow corpse too 🥲 I think I'm going to try this DIY approach. I have white mixing pigment and have been thinking about mixing in some green colour correcter too. I also have a lot of red blotchiness and purple eye bags. Why are there so many different colours on my face? 😑
Everything you said has been my experience too!! I also thought my face had a pink undertone because I dealt with redness for so long. My body is pink toned, my neck is yellow and my face is white, but somehow also ruddy. Nothing is ever going to match me perfectly so I’ve just focussed on keeping my face as clear as possible so I can wear more sheer foundation which doesn’t look as wrong a colour on my face 😂
OMG same! No foundation ever looked right - so I settled for just looking super pale in "neutral" shades. I had no idea you could be pasty AND olive, but when I look at my old photos before Retin-A destroyed my skin, you can clearly see the greenish-gray shadows.
Not me being in my late twenties when I finally understood I had an olive undertone and that's why no foundation looked good on me. You saved me with your recommendations for olive skin, to be honest! I don't usually wear much make up, but I did my wedding make up with 100% of products recommended by you and it looked amazing!
I’m light/medium olive, I look best in winter colors as well as highlighter yellow, which is not my favorite color. For a long time I used neutral shades but they looked bland. Warm foundation makes me look green, cool does nothing for me. One day a MUA sold me some peachy foundation. Peach? I can’t wear peach color clothes. I have found that it truly looks best with my skin tone. Figured that out in my 60s but I didn’t wear makeup until I let my go natural silver. Better late than never.
I would guess that the fact that you're also a visual artist (painter?) has increased your color mixing knowledge. I'm 60 and have only become familiar with the color wheel in the last few years since I've fallen down the YT art tutorial rabbit hole 😄
That actually made a ton of sense and wa so helpful. I've recently become overly obsessed with trying to find or create the "perfect" foundation match when I realized I have a little olive undertone. This was a great reminder that good enough is FINE and I can balance all this out with the rest of my makeup. That's what I used to do anyway. Thank you for bringing me back to reality!
And this is one of the many reasons why when ppl ask me about my makeup and if I can give them tips, I ALWAYS recommend your channel. You're the best source of technical makeup on UA-cam.
I love this! Thanks for talking about how the color we see is bed and layers and layers of different elements in the body. It’s a useful thing to keep in mind.Would love to see you balance do some example of “balanced” and “unbalanced” makeup combinations for illustration.
You are pretty much my skin twin. I have fair-light skin that leans more warm but can be neutral depending on the foundation, with a green undertone and I always have to mix my own foundation. I can never find a formula that I like that is a good enough color match. I literally have 30 different foundations and I'm not a makeup influencer so that's pretty ridiculous. However, I have to say that I have fun messing around with it. Your videos are my favorite bc you are an artist so you understand and use color theory really well. You're the best Alex!
This is taking me back to the days when I spent my time doing commissioned artwork and got to have fun mixing paint colors! ❤ I love your videos so much! Your video on making any foundation match your skin was life changing for me. I bought purple and green liquid tints and have managed to save myself a ton of money trying to get matching shades of often expensive foundations as a result. Now, as long as they're close to my color, I can tint them to near perfection. Thank you, gorgeous lady, for teaching me/us SO much!
Great video. I love this breakdowns of makeup theory you do. I always learn something new ❤ I do “weird” thing when shopping for bronzer (at least I have not heard anyone talk about it) I swatch it on my shoulder - aka part of my body where I get the truest tone of my natural tan since my body ussualy won’t tan much. It’s great hack for fair/light skin tones IMO when combined with buildable formula. The only thing I want warn about is: don’t do it right after tanning when your skin is still irritated/redish from tanning. Bronzers with buildable formula are best friends of every fair/light person, I find that overly pigmented bronzers are the reason why I used to look like a clown since my true tan can fade in a month after summer but the bronzer won’t be any sheerer even if I break my hand blending it. Hope this might help somebody. ❤
Truly helpful, thank you for this, bestie! One video idea: could you potentially do a video on 'what to do on makeup days when your makeup just doesn't sit right whatever you do but you have to be put together anyways' and potential ways to avoid such situations (besides well... not wearing it at all lol)? ❤
Great information! I grew up with bad information. When I was a little kid, I remember seeing Bobbi Brown on Oprah and she said to always wear a yellow based foundation. Then later, because I'm pale, I heard I must be pink. I walked around looking dead for years with a too pink and too light foundation that made me look grey
It took me years to understand I had a light-medium olive skintone and not a yellow golden tone. Every foundation I’ve tried always made me orange and never matched my neck. I finally figured out mixing blue pigment to my foundation/concealer is the key!! Elf has a blue concealer and LA girl has a mixing pigment you can mix to your foundations! It’s a life changer!!
You're such an artist, I love it! You are doing God's work for all of us who struggle with this. I have the mismatch issue, so when you said to balance it with your concealer tone and your bronzer tone, that made so much sense
Great video on color theory and skin tones! As an art nerd I would love a video on lighting and makeup. For example best and worst lighting to use when doing makeup and/ or best lighting tricks for certain makeup looks and events. I obviously do my daytime makeup but what about nighttime, photoshoots , weddings etc...
This is so truly helpful ! I have always been so confused with choosing my foundation as my face tone is medium fair and neck, chest, arms are much darker... You explained so well and gave great tips, it will really help me to make better choices in the future. I follow you for a little while now but never comment because english is not my native language but I really want to say (at least one time) that you are always so helpful, human, funny and lovely ! Thank you so much for all the time you offer to us all !
This video just validated my thoughts on mixing foundations! Thank you for your tips! Imagine my color-blind self picking the right foundation (or any make-up product) shade for my skintone & undertone. These days, I'm mixing a neutral light shade foundation w/ a fair olive one. So far, it works. I'll buy the light-medium neutral next time.
There IS an end. The colour wheel is a spherical representation of the visual portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is linear. Red is at one end, and violet at the other. 😃 Also, values are just lights and darks, while contrast is the comparison of those to each other.
This video couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. Earlier today I was trying some foundation samples from Lisa Eldridge and thought I found - THE - perfect color dead-on match in her medium olive shade after the cheek-jaw-neck strip swatch test, but when I put it on my entire face, I was surprised I looked quite dull. I ended up trying on a slightly warmer shade on the other half of my face to compare and thought it looked better overall.
Light warm olive with purple/blue 360 degree dark circles, foundations have always been hard. You are my primary source for help. I have blue veins on either side of my nose between my eyes, and even after using yellow/orange concealer, within an hour, the darkness returns. Still trying to figure that one out. Oh, and I'm over 75.
Hi, loved this video! I think it was in this one oooor maybe another one, but I've heard you mention a few times about matching tones across your whole makeup look, and how it's not just about the tone in your foundation. A video where you kind of go into matching tones across all of your makeup would be super cool!
This made PERFECT sense! I’m a Mua but I’ve been looking to really perfect my craft with different face shapes and different skin tones and undertones. If you couldn’t tell I’m a black women but I do have clients of different skin tones then me and I’ve been having an hard time with my lighter clients/models while the over all applications look good they look kinda dead. Even though everything “matches”. Ive been trying to make everything one color! With darker tones you can do that and get away with it more but with lighter tones that’s when they start to look a bit dead. Now I know what I was doing wrong! Thank you so much for this video!!!
While watching the video, I totally get it…then I try to figure out my makeup and I’m lost again lmao I’m thankful that you have the same sort of coloring that I do - certain yellows and greens and oranges make me look ill because of the greenish-yellow in my olive skin. I have the HARDEST time figuring out which foundations to buy. It also is interesting to consider the things you were explaining about not going too heavily in one direction - because I’m a brunette, have dark brown eyes, olive skin, and tan very very easily, I’ve always been told/assumed that I’m warm toned. It’s only since I’ve found your channel that I’ve realized the nuance in my skin. It always seemed curious to me that the blush I gravitate towards is an icy pink - it seems too light for my skin but it seems to look best. I think my tone shifts depending on the time of year. I can wear more golden foundation in summer, but in winter it looks ridiculous. Time will tell if I can figure this out at all lol ❤ thank you for the great information (as always!!)
We are twins. What I've found helpful is to go for more of a sheer-medium coverage instead of full, or stick with concealer & bronzer but skip the foundation. Olive concealers are easier to find than foundation, I've found. You are spot on with needing different makeup for summer than winter. In summer I find I can get away with more mainstream "yellow" based concealers and brown/bronzy bronzers. In the winter, I need light, cool, olive concealer (neutral can sometimes work) and I switch to blush instead of bronzer so I get that warmth when I loose my tan. You may want to consider your contrast levels too. In the summer, I find I can wear a lot of cool-based colors (blues, especially light blue, highlighter colors, etc), but in the winter I'll need berrys, maroons, & burgundys and to fill in my brows dark to balance out my pale, less saturated skin. Hope you find the match you are looking for!
i love this video, thank you for taking the time to show us!! following up though, it'd be cool to see a video of you demonstrating what you talked about at the end. like, purposefully wearing the slightly off coloured foundation then making it work by strategically picking your concealor, blush, bronzer. Then comparing the looks!!
Hi Alex! I’m very neutral, like yourself, but darker. Medium in winter, medium tan in summer. I have an olive undertone. I can’t seem to find a foundation or tinted moisturizer. Every counter matches me completely differently, and I’m starting to do the same. I get told “you can wear most colours and make them work” but I don’t see that as a positive. Obvs don’t want the lifeless one-toned look, but now I’m even more confused than I was when I started. Suggestions?
Dior, Pat McGrath, Haus Labs, and Lisa Eldridge have olive shades. Olive can lean warm or cool. I would err on the warm side so it brightens your skin tone. An olive leaning bronzer will save the day. My fave is Fenty cream bronzer in Teddy. I’m also a med/tan neutral olive. 💚
Just discovered I'm a fair/light olive person at 26. so many years of makeup being to Orange to yellow or to pink, just always the wrong colour and not understanding why. But I still can't tell what products to buy/use because the makeup industry is still very exclusive alot of the info out there still doesn't even acknowledge the existence of olive they just put us in the nutral category. And lableing is hard to follow, some brands just give a name like "linen". As someone who looks like a zombi without makeup how do you figure out if your a warm or cool olive when your very pale, how do i figure out what concealer, foundation, bronzer, contour, blush and eyeshadow pallets complement my olive skin because I buy makeup and because of colour theory it always looks different on my skin. Eg. what is a neutral eye shadow pallet for a light olive My whole makup journey has had the restart button pushed with the realisation of my olive'ness and now I dont know what to do. I'm also someone who only has a modest beauty budget of like drugstore products so I find it extra hard aspecially in Aus where I find our product variety is more limited at times and stock is often low/non-existent and swatching is very unlikely to be possible.
omg I love how you gave us painting/color mixing lesson and used that to teach us about how to find the right foundation shade! So creative and informative. By far my favorite makeup channel on UA-cam
Alex, don't know if you'll be able to see this but you absolutely MUST TRY the Evy technology spf mousse if you haven't already. It is amaziiing! It leaves a slightly tacky finish but not shinny so it works besutifully with makeup or with a bit of powder if you don't wanna wear makeup. We need a review from you pweaaase! Ly! Edit: I have the kids version- bigger package and doesn't sting my eyes which is a miracle 😂
Very informative video❤ thank you so much Alex! You are the best ❤ love how you try your best to explain your makeup knowledge and how you are trying to educate your audience on how to improve their makeup skills ❤ I am learning a lot since I started watching your channel!
I puzzle over my under/overtone constantly and this video was fascinating! Except am I warm, cool, what?? Super cool eyeshadow (like gray) makes me look dead, and deep mauve anywhere really does not work. But I'm quite fair. I don't knooooowww. More on color theory, please!
I feel like something is wrong with my eyeballs bc I cannot for the life of me see the colors people say they see in skintones. It drives me nuts bc I want to see it but I just don't. Even when told and shown I am like yeah nope I don't see it.
@remc0026 I'm 34 years old and have loved makeup since I was a teenager so now I'm like omg have I been walking around looking crazy all these years?!?! LMAO idk I feel like someone would have told me by now 🙃 I'm trying to learn it's just so hard when I don't have the "eye for it" like some ppl do!
@miraclebub glad I'm not the only one....I watch Kackie here on UA-cam and she talks so much abt undertones and this color and that color and I'm just watching like 🧐. I do try but I'm more of a if it matches my skin good if not well then not good type of person. lol
@kam9543 right? Warm, cool, etc. Drives me nuts. Alex should offer a service to help poor fools like us! I'd legit pay just to finally have someone just tell me! 😂
Colour theory and the colour wheel are great educational tools when it comes to understanding what colours work best, and who better to explain it than a visual artist. When I was young I was very fair with a pink undertone. As I've aged - and seasonally - the dominant shade on my face has darkened so that my summer shade is a light medium neutral with yellow undertones. My arms and hands are darker than my face so I use a warm contour or a bronzer to get some balance in tone. Awesome colour tutorial - thanks!
I’m Latina and my skin is naturally dark but my face is SO FAIR!!! it’s really difficult to find good makeup for me. Just so you have an idea my foundation is the Dior Neutral N 1.5 with glow finish which is one of the lightest colours they have. The rest of my body is tan! If I’m not careful I’ll end up looking like a ghost for sure. I loved this video and would love to get more info about colour and light study
Thank you, thank you! This was incredibly helpful! I struggle with my neck & face being two different colors. Plus I have melasma spots. A lot to deal with on my face. But this video really helped reduce some of the anxiety.
I adore the way your mind works. I get the impression you are neurotically attentive to details, and you think outside the box to innovate and create and customize things for you. Are you hyper-creative? You just seem extremely plugged in.
I found out that there is something called "silver undertones" which is kind of like the cousin to olive tone. It's basically just a nice way of saying you have blue grey undertone. I have a warm overtone and that equals olive-ish so olive foundations match me. Well, after I mix white pigment. In fact the way I found out about my undertone was doing exactly this. I could go on and on about silver undertones because I really had to go on a deep dive to find anything about it.
I think someone I know might actually have that! I did her makeup recently and I could talk forever about it because it’s so different than what I’ve done for myself or others. I’m honestly still a beginner, I just have an eye for mixing colours. Thankfully her makeup turned out beautifully even though I couldn’t explain why. But it could’ve so easily been a disaster!!! Thank god she chose her foundation and concealer herself. Her skin is cool, so I would’ve chosen a cool foundation without a second thought and it would’ve been much too pink. And if I had planned the rest based on that assumption instead of just going off instinct it would’ve been a disaster too! So I’d love to understand more if you want to share!!!
So interesting!! I think I might have this. I heard somewhere that if you’re really pale it’s harder to find your undertone because it’s so diluted that’s why so many pale olive people are walking around thinking they’re something else. P.s. would love to hear more info about it!
This video speaks to my soul. My whole life I have struggled with finding the right undertone. I spent my youth believing that I had warm undertones but, strangely enough, every time I went to a store and asked for a foundation match they would choose something very pink, which I never understood. Lately I've had the suspicious that I probably have a slightly olive undertone and since I've adjusted my makeup with that in mind, everything looks much better, but there is still something odd about my makeup. If that weren't enough struggle, I have freckles all over my face and body, so if I apply a foundation with high coverage, it looks like I'm wearing a mask. But if I apply a skin tint or something with light coverage, it's not enough to conceal the redness that frequently appears on various areas of my face. So, in short, I'm 39 and have never been able to find a good foundation match. Any suggestions?
What I like to do for everyday is just mix some green color corrector into my sunscreen as a base and diffuse a bit of concealer overtop with a big brush if there’s still too much redness peeking through. I’ve also found that green powder covers a bit of redness while accentuating freckles I can’t usually see, but it’s hard to find one that isn’t mint-colored.
@@paula-zzz I haven't tried and, while I appreciate the suggestion, I'm not going to try. My freckles are literally all over my face, in various sizes. If I were to try to recreate them by painting on top of foundation I would have to spend a lot of time doing so, and still, I'm sure it would look fake. What I've been doing so far is trying to cover my redness with a green color corrector and then apply a skin tint. It kinda works, it's just not perfect.
@@EdwardDillingerTRONL green powders?? I've never heard of them! I normally use a green color corrector, then apply a skin tint on top and then concealer where needed. I haven't tried mixing the color corrector with the sunscreen, I will see how that goes. Any recommendations for green powder?
“Mario Badescu Special Healing Powder” is the one I use. It’s not a finishing powder per se, so it looks nicest when applied to bare skin. I think I’ve seen folks use a high end one that looks nice (Dior maybe) but that’s… not an option lol
Recently I started mixing blue into my foundations to mute them, and it was a true game changer for me. I am neutral leaning slightly warm with some green undertones, but very muted over all. I look like I should wear light neutral or warm shades, but the closest matches for foundation are usually still too yellow or too peach. I read about using green or blue pigment mixers, so I tried it out. I have found that the right foundation shade for me looks quite grayish when I drop some on the back of my hand. I have also realized that my skin tone is actually light to medium, not fair or very light like I had thought for so long. Shades that I had thought were too dark were actually perfect when I muted the warmth a little bit. I am 50 years old and have worn makeup for decades, and I just found this out.
I’m in my mid fifties and was just matched last year with a Dior olive shade. The lady at Sephora insisted I try it. It is perfection! My whole life I’ve just looked for the most yellow shade I could find and even those would somehow run pink or orange. Now if a company doesn’t have an olive shade foundation I can’t be bothered….
Could you pls explain the whole thing with 'muted' shades and how that relates to pale olive skin? I thought I understood it but frankly after I got the Kett Hydro foundation in Olive 2, I am questioning everything LOL. To my (untrained...) eye...the Kett looks literally red, which should be the opposite on the colour wheel...? Least this is what I thought. Halp! 😁
A muted colour is one in which the intensity (saturation) has been reduced (muted) by the addition of grey or the colour wheel opposite colour: muted pale olive skin is greenish but with the 'volume turned down'. Why the makeup intended for olive skin should be reddish, I don't know, unless that brand is one that aims to 'neutralise' skin tones, so they're giving you pink to combat your green?
Dude! I have vitiligo and trying to match foundation is HARD work! The advice you just gave about your lightest shade is for concealer and the darkest shade is your contour 🤯🤯🤯 That’s really going to help me! Love all your work legend! Would love to see how you would work with rosacea and heavily wrinkled under eye areas. Love ya 😘
The best olive shades i found for my tan skin is ooreal true match, sephota brand foundation, haus labs. Everything oulls too orange on me and i wasixing in green into my foundation but since finding these brands have my perfect match, i am so happy. My mkup is looking much better these days
This is so fascinating Alex. I walked into a Kryolan makeup shop in London a few weeks ago and the lady instantly told me I was olive. I had an inkling because I've always struggled to find a foundation that actually matches me - they're always too yellow or too pink. I have a drugstore concealer (that's been discontinued! nooo) that matches beautifully but looks green next to every other drugstore (and high end) brand. It's a bloody nightmare being olive toned but pale AF. Thank you for this, it really does help to understand our lesser talked about (and provided for) skin tone
@@AlexandraAnele the lady at Kryolan said she can only use their foundation (they do an olive undertone) as she too was olive (Italian, but pale!) - would love to see what you think of their foundations and concealers x
This helps a lot. I am 30+ and have never really been wearing make up on the regular, because it all just looked wrong on me. I am very pale and every foundation and concealer just looks variations of orange on me. After (finally) discovering colour correction paletts through youtube I am now wearing make up more often and not getting frustrated every time I try.
This was very helpful! Colour theory is so complicated (to me anyway) but you explained colour theory as it relates to makeup in a way that is easy to understand.
Wow I have such a hard time understanding undertone and what shades work and don’t. But the one thing I am grateful for that you said was about your friend that has a light face, medium neck and dark arms and those tips of what to do. Totally appreciate that
This reminds me also of that TikTok trend of "finding my color palette" in clothes and "Am I a silver or a gold." Honestly if you could create a look for the girlies who still find to find their ~colors~, and what colors work for different skin tones.
what you're saying is obvious, but it's not "easygoing" to me. I have pale skin with a lot of redness, discoloration and I tan easily. Whenever I walk into Sephora I wanna find a magical foundation that matches my face and neck, also chest, arms and so on. even though I know it's impossible I'm always got frustrated… when matches my face it doesn't match my neck or my chest, sometimes it works on part of my face but it doesn't match my forehead which is a little darker than my cheeks and chin
Great video…making me think about this. I have a very pale face with rosy undertones. My neck is also very light but more neutral and my arms have a little more color in the summer, neutral with a hint of warmth. No matter what I always have issues…if I match my neck I look ghostly, if I choose more rosy, I can see it my neck. Any warm foundation and I look orange. So I tend to go more neutral and bronze with more cool toned bronzers…with a hint of red. For video I go warmer…in real life I go light with cool undertones. Not sure why, I always get matched with a very dark shade that looks terrible when in natural light outside. Thank you for this video…the search continues. And these suggestions will help a lot.
Love this. It helped... Did you see Lisa Eldridge added one or two shades to foundations and theres an olive tone one I think it 2.5,, just another for you to look at
Nars vanilla concealer always looks really white under my eyes but then straight up peachy orange on my wrist. I think my face is neutral warm but my body is beluga white.
My neck is the darkest part of my body and my chest the lightest one. I also have an olive undertone especially in the cooler months. Foundation matching is a nightmare and blue mixer is my best friend. Or I just look bright orange. I often have the problem of mixing my foundation properly but then my powder is too orange. And a blue mixing powder doesn't not exist... and with my oily skin, powder is a must. So I guess I'm doomed.
Amazing video, it actually explains some unconscious choices I make to balance out my makeup routine...see, I'm also very olive toned but probably fall more in the Light to Light Medium category due to some Melasma, so it's hard finding a close shade and usually use bronzers, blush, and highlighters as a way to subtly add dimension colors so that overall I balance out. Have you tried the Rituel De Fille 3 drop weightless Serum Foundation...they actually have a pale Neutral to olive (105) and a Light golden to olive (115) color that actually shows very olive!
Hello Alexandra, Thank you for this awesome demo :) I love your approach. In France we doesn't have youtubers who offer technical approach and ask themselves smart questions about the goal of makeup so thank you for being here. As for the olive undertone, have you tried the KVD Good Apple in shade 008 light? It's the one I use on my jaw, chin, above my mouth and at the bottom of my cheeks so it matches my neck. This foundation is a bit drying but I prefer use it than a more hydrating one that doesn't match my neck... And for my forehead, I use the Nars Light reflecting foundation in Gobi. xx
Alex, this video is gold. I'm a muted olive and I spent SO. MUCH. time and money trying to find my perfect shade match. When I found something that matched my neck perfectly (which is very green as yours), it made me look straight up dead, as you pointed out lol I figured out that what makes every single foundation look orange on me is actually not being MUTED enough. Now I go for neutral-warm muted shades (which is still very hard to find because it seems like every fucking foundation out there is saturated as hell) and it works soooo much better. You put into words what I noticed along the years and it makes so, so much sense. I wish I had watched this video like 10 years ago lol thank you so much for providing us thorough and useful information
This is for everyone... but also for all the olives out there who went for 26 years without understanding their undertone, I know you! The struggle was so real, like real enough that I gave up on makeup entirely for awhile
47 here, still not really knowing my undertone xD olive yes but olive cool? Olive warm? Ahah no certainties in my makeup life!
Right! When neutral undertones make us look gray or sickly, and warm undertones make us too orange or yellow 😂
💚
@@Mrsjdw4 Story of my life smh. I recently discovered that I am a warm olive and it suddenly made sense why the foundation shade never seemed right and it either washed me out or was too warm and made me orange.
I used to tell people I have green on my skin and they thought I was crazy 🗿
This technique reminds me of how oil painters, like Bouguereau, would build skin tones with many different colors. His results were not only realistic, but vibrant! Excellent job!
Oh my God! I adore Bouguereau's skintones. ❤
Hey olives! Lisa Eldridge added a few more olive-toned foundations to her line. They're freakin' glorious. (Shades 2.5, 9, 9.5, 16, 23, 35, so there are a ton of options.)
Agreed! I had no idea I was an olive until tried the 2.5 shade and it was a perfect match that I can use it as a spot concealer.
9 is my best match in any foundation! 💚
Ooooh thank you!!
I have a vision of Alex being a teacher, walking thru her students while we are all mixing vigorously, trying to find our own color!😅
Enjoyed this video...fascinating!
That would be so fun tho 🥹
@AlexandraAnele Right! And I might have a chance of getting better than a C grade because my teacher would be so dope!
Seriously tho, have learned a lot from your videos & have stepped outside of my comfort box as a result. 👏
I would 100% take her class! What a great idea and it could be a “lightbulb” moment for Alex…..You Tube should make her more money, she is one to watch and her approach is like no one else on You Tube……❤️
I’m imagining her class would be a requirement for all companies who make any sort of complexion products. Those who produce limited shade ranges would go straight to detention. 😂🌸🐝
Job offers in the future: *Compulsory requirement: DIPLOMANELE* 👩🏻🎓👨🏻🎓👩🏼🎓👨🏽🎓👩🏿🎓
Oh gosh this problem is the bane of my makeup existence. I'm fair! I tan easily! I burn easily that fades to tan! My undertones are very yellow! I also have a lot of red due to blemishes! Oh no, this shade oxidized ORANGE on me! The veins in my wrist are somehow blue, green, AND purple!
It's a mess.
Giirl, I feel you 😢
I feel you... We all have blue, green and purple tiny veins in our wrists, even magenta-burgundy! I don' t know who had the brilliant idea to chose this area🤷🏻♀️. Find the bigger ones, especially on chest, breasts, biceps or inner tights where the skin is extra thin and probably less tanned😉. If your tan is a roller coaster, buy two foundations: your very palest shade and another one a bit darker than your most tanned moment. Mix then in different proportions and done. Hope it helps. 🧛🏻♀️🖤
Girl….. Same to All of this! And I look good in all of the “seasons” and gold and silver and rose gold look good on me. I have stumped hairstyles when they were trying swatches on me trying to decide if my highlights should be warm or cool undertones and they said both worked. 🤷🏻♀️ And, yet, not everything works, maybe wise and shade wise.
Back in the past century, this was the first thing you were asked to do at the MAC job interview. _"Try to make her look fabulous just with this and no tools"_ was the second. "This"= an unsharpened Spice or Stone lip liner. Being selected was The Hunger Games Make Up Edition😅. 🧛🏻♀️🖤
Green/yellow undertones unite. For years...nothing worked on my skin. Too red, too orange. I got so frustrated. It's nice to have so many more options now. And maybe I'll mix something myself. You've inspired me.
You are straight up a genius in your field and unbelievably awesome at explaining in depth to your audience....all that with a soothing tone voice ❤
Right? I learn so much from Alex's videos, like please explain every detail it's how we learn! And I agree I love her chilled out voice and way of speaking like we're all friends.
As a very pale white chick with blonde hair, blue eyes, and pinkish face, I spent a long time just grabbing the lightest shade available. When I realized that was making me look even more like a pink ghost I would try the next lightest shade, and look orange. So I mixed them and wondered why this peachy tone that looked like it would match, ended up too orange, too pink, too light, and too dark all at the same time. I read articles, and watched videos. I stared at my vein colors under sunlight and artificial lights. Finally I said screw it and just started color mixing from scratch. (As a fellow artist, it took me way to long to get to this point.) I was surprised by how much green ended up going into my mixes, and how gray and yellow the products would look on the palette, only to finally match my skin! I finally realized my skin tone is not "porcelain" or "light ivory". Apparently, Its sallow corpse. 😂
I'm sallow corpse too 🥲 I think I'm going to try this DIY approach. I have white mixing pigment and have been thinking about mixing in some green colour correcter too. I also have a lot of red blotchiness and purple eye bags. Why are there so many different colours on my face? 😑
😂
Everything you said has been my experience too!! I also thought my face had a pink undertone because I dealt with redness for so long. My body is pink toned, my neck is yellow and my face is white, but somehow also ruddy. Nothing is ever going to match me perfectly so I’ve just focussed on keeping my face as clear as possible so I can wear more sheer foundation which doesn’t look as wrong a colour on my face 😂
OMG same! No foundation ever looked right - so I settled for just looking super pale in "neutral" shades. I had no idea you could be pasty AND olive, but when I look at my old photos before Retin-A destroyed my skin, you can clearly see the greenish-gray shadows.
@@tomlinson1107how did retin-a destroy your skin? :(
Not me being in my late twenties when I finally understood I had an olive undertone and that's why no foundation looked good on me. You saved me with your recommendations for olive skin, to be honest! I don't usually wear much make up, but I did my wedding make up with 100% of products recommended by you and it looked amazing!
Try being 32 😢
I’m light/medium olive, I look best in winter colors as well as highlighter yellow, which is not my favorite color. For a long time I used neutral shades but they looked bland. Warm foundation makes me look green, cool does nothing for me. One day a MUA sold me some peachy foundation. Peach? I can’t wear peach color clothes. I have found that it truly looks best with my skin tone. Figured that out in my 60s but I didn’t wear makeup until I let my go natural silver. Better late than never.
I would guess that the fact that you're also a visual artist (painter?) has increased your color mixing knowledge. I'm 60 and have only become familiar with the color wheel in the last few years since I've fallen down the YT art tutorial rabbit hole 😄
The fade… chef’s kiss
That actually made a ton of sense and wa so helpful. I've recently become overly obsessed with trying to find or create the "perfect" foundation match when I realized I have a little olive undertone. This was a great reminder that good enough is FINE and I can balance all this out with the rest of my makeup. That's what I used to do anyway. Thank you for bringing me back to reality!
I’m glad you’re going in depth how adding a little color goes a long way in tones and how important adding blue is.
And this is one of the many reasons why when ppl ask me about my makeup and if I can give them tips, I ALWAYS recommend your channel. You're the best source of technical makeup on UA-cam.
I love this! Thanks for talking about how the color we see is bed and layers and layers of different elements in the body. It’s a useful thing to keep in mind.Would love to see you balance do some example of “balanced” and “unbalanced” makeup combinations for illustration.
Recently I started mixing some yellow eyeshadow into my neutral BB cream. Game changer ❤
You are pretty much my skin twin. I have fair-light skin that leans more warm but can be neutral depending on the foundation, with a green undertone and I always have to mix my own foundation. I can never find a formula that I like that is a good enough color match. I literally have 30 different foundations and I'm not a makeup influencer so that's pretty ridiculous. However, I have to say that I have fun messing around with it. Your videos are my favorite bc you are an artist so you understand and use color theory really well. You're the best Alex!
This is taking me back to the days when I spent my time doing commissioned artwork and got to have fun mixing paint colors! ❤ I love your videos so much! Your video on making any foundation match your skin was life changing for me. I bought purple and green liquid tints and have managed to save myself a ton of money trying to get matching shades of often expensive foundations as a result. Now, as long as they're close to my color, I can tint them to near perfection. Thank you, gorgeous lady, for teaching me/us SO much!
Dude, your knowledge and explanation of colour theory is seriously THE BEST. No wonder your shade match is always flawless. You're an artist.
Great video. I love this breakdowns of makeup theory you do. I always learn something new ❤ I do “weird” thing when shopping for bronzer (at least I have not heard anyone talk about it) I swatch it on my shoulder - aka part of my body where I get the truest tone of my natural tan since my body ussualy won’t tan much. It’s great hack for fair/light skin tones IMO when combined with buildable formula. The only thing I want warn about is: don’t do it right after tanning when your skin is still irritated/redish from tanning. Bronzers with buildable formula are best friends of every fair/light person, I find that overly pigmented bronzers are the reason why I used to look like a clown since my true tan can fade in a month after summer but the bronzer won’t be any sheerer even if I break my hand blending it. Hope this might help somebody. ❤
I’m turning 40 in December and I honestly don’t have a good understanding of my undertone. It’s frustrating. Can’t wait to watch ❤❤
Truly helpful, thank you for this, bestie! One video idea: could you potentially do a video on 'what to do on makeup days when your makeup just doesn't sit right whatever you do but you have to be put together anyways' and potential ways to avoid such situations (besides well... not wearing it at all lol)? ❤
Having light skin tone with olive undertone myself, I always go to your videos!! Thankyou for representing us shrek people lol 😂😂😂😂😂
Shrek people 💀
Great information! I grew up with bad information. When I was a little kid, I remember seeing Bobbi Brown on Oprah and she said to always wear a yellow based foundation. Then later, because I'm pale, I heard I must be pink. I walked around looking dead for years with a too pink and too light foundation that made me look grey
Finding my foundation is the hardest thing. The money I’ve wasted and the bottles I have piled up is ridonkulous!😂
As a typical Mediterranean (Greek), i have a pale skintone with the usual olive undertone. It's very hard to find a foundation.
Youre like my makeup art teacher that inspires me to be informed and create cool looks. I would love makeup...assignments? Lol seriously
This was SO great - thank you! As a non-artist, to see those basic colors mesh together to look like skin was straight up magical.
It took me years to understand I had a light-medium olive skintone and not a yellow golden tone. Every foundation I’ve tried always made me orange and never matched my neck. I finally figured out mixing blue pigment to my foundation/concealer is the key!! Elf has a blue concealer and LA girl has a mixing pigment you can mix to your foundations! It’s a life changer!!
You can add blue? I thought you had to add green for olive?
Great content and really helpful. How about doing a video for when you don't have the right foundation shade but you have to make it work?
You're such an artist, I love it! You are doing God's work for all of us who struggle with this. I have the mismatch issue, so when you said to balance it with your concealer tone and your bronzer tone, that made so much sense
That’s so cool. Never thought about our color of our skin. Thanks for sharing. I learned a lot from you.
This is fascinating!!!
I need more and how to make sure the whole face has harmony!
Great video on color theory and skin tones! As an art nerd I would love a video on lighting and makeup. For example best and worst lighting to use when doing makeup and/ or best lighting tricks for certain makeup looks and events. I obviously do my daytime makeup but what about nighttime, photoshoots , weddings etc...
This is so truly helpful ! I have always been so confused with choosing my foundation as my face tone is medium fair and neck, chest, arms are much darker... You explained so well and gave great tips, it will really help me to make better choices in the future. I follow you for a little while now but never comment because english is not my native language but I really want to say (at least one time) that you are always so helpful, human, funny and lovely ! Thank you so much for all the time you offer to us all !
This is blowing my mind. I understand the concepts but I still can’t figure out how to look at myself in the mirror and know what I am.
This is so helpful! I can’t ever get a foundation that is spot on but have learned to use blush or bronzer or both to make it all come together.
This video just validated my thoughts on mixing foundations! Thank you for your tips!
Imagine my color-blind self picking the right foundation (or any make-up product) shade for my skintone & undertone.
These days, I'm mixing a neutral light shade foundation w/ a fair olive one. So far, it works. I'll buy the light-medium neutral next time.
I have a pale green undertone. It’s so hard to find a matching foundation. (Can imagine it would be called “Seasick”)
This is my skin too. Obviously, I wear a DIY mix that I named _Princess Fiona_ Feel free to borrow it. No copyright 😉
🧛🏻♀️🖤
There IS an end. The colour wheel is a spherical representation of the visual portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is linear. Red is at one end, and violet at the other. 😃
Also, values are just lights and darks, while contrast is the comparison of those to each other.
Impressive, answers so many questions. Thank you.
Happy to help! 🩷
This video couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. Earlier today I was trying some foundation samples from Lisa Eldridge and thought I found - THE - perfect color dead-on match in her medium olive shade after the cheek-jaw-neck strip swatch test, but when I put it on my entire face, I was surprised I looked quite dull. I ended up trying on a slightly warmer shade on the other half of my face to compare and thought it looked better overall.
Light warm olive with purple/blue 360 degree dark circles, foundations have always been hard. You are my primary source for help. I have blue veins on either side of my nose between my eyes, and even after using yellow/orange concealer, within an hour, the darkness returns. Still trying to figure that one out. Oh, and I'm over 75.
Hi, loved this video! I think it was in this one oooor maybe another one, but I've heard you mention a few times about matching tones across your whole makeup look, and how it's not just about the tone in your foundation. A video where you kind of go into matching tones across all of your makeup would be super cool!
As a painter, watching you mixing and explaining... That was solo satisfying! 😂😂
This made PERFECT sense! I’m a Mua but I’ve been looking to really perfect my craft with different face shapes and different skin tones and undertones. If you couldn’t tell I’m a black women but I do have clients of different skin tones then me and I’ve been having an hard time with my lighter clients/models while the over all applications look good they look kinda dead. Even though everything “matches”. Ive been trying to make everything one color! With darker tones you can do that and get away with it more but with lighter tones that’s when they start to look a bit dead. Now I know what I was doing wrong! Thank you so much for this video!!!
While watching the video, I totally get it…then I try to figure out my makeup and I’m lost again lmao
I’m thankful that you have the same sort of coloring that I do - certain yellows and greens and oranges make me look ill because of the greenish-yellow in my olive skin. I have the HARDEST time figuring out which foundations to buy.
It also is interesting to consider the things you were explaining about not going too heavily in one direction - because I’m a brunette, have dark brown eyes, olive skin, and tan very very easily, I’ve always been told/assumed that I’m warm toned. It’s only since I’ve found your channel that I’ve realized the nuance in my skin. It always seemed curious to me that the blush I gravitate towards is an icy pink - it seems too light for my skin but it seems to look best.
I think my tone shifts depending on the time of year. I can wear more golden foundation in summer, but in winter it looks ridiculous.
Time will tell if I can figure this out at all lol ❤ thank you for the great information (as always!!)
We are twins. What I've found helpful is to go for more of a sheer-medium coverage instead of full, or stick with concealer & bronzer but skip the foundation. Olive concealers are easier to find than foundation, I've found.
You are spot on with needing different makeup for summer than winter. In summer I find I can get away with more mainstream "yellow" based concealers and brown/bronzy bronzers. In the winter, I need light, cool, olive concealer (neutral can sometimes work) and I switch to blush instead of bronzer so I get that warmth when I loose my tan.
You may want to consider your contrast levels too. In the summer, I find I can wear a lot of cool-based colors (blues, especially light blue, highlighter colors, etc), but in the winter I'll need berrys, maroons, & burgundys and to fill in my brows dark to balance out my pale, less saturated skin.
Hope you find the match you are looking for!
I love the color theory videos! I just used the complementary colors eyeshadow blending tutorial today!
i love this video, thank you for taking the time to show us!!
following up though, it'd be cool to see a video of you demonstrating what you talked about at the end.
like, purposefully wearing the slightly off coloured foundation then making it work by strategically picking your concealor, blush, bronzer.
Then comparing the looks!!
I've never seen a makeup artist explain things so well, thanks Alex
😭 Thank you!
Hi Alex! I’m very neutral, like yourself, but darker. Medium in winter, medium tan in summer. I have an olive undertone. I can’t seem to find a foundation or tinted moisturizer. Every counter matches me completely differently, and I’m starting to do the same. I get told “you can wear most colours and make them work” but I don’t see that as a positive. Obvs don’t want the lifeless one-toned look, but now I’m even more confused than I was when I started. Suggestions?
Dior, Pat McGrath, Haus Labs, and Lisa Eldridge have olive shades. Olive can lean warm or cool. I would err on the warm side so it brightens your skin tone. An olive leaning bronzer will save the day. My fave is Fenty cream bronzer in Teddy. I’m also a med/tan neutral olive. 💚
this is perfect timing
Just discovered I'm a fair/light olive person at 26. so many years of makeup being to Orange to yellow or to pink, just always the wrong colour and not understanding why.
But I still can't tell what products to buy/use because the makeup industry is still very exclusive alot of the info out there still doesn't even acknowledge the existence of olive they just put us in the nutral category. And lableing is hard to follow, some brands just give a name like "linen".
As someone who looks like a zombi without makeup how do you figure out if your a warm or cool olive when your very pale, how do i figure out what concealer, foundation, bronzer, contour, blush and eyeshadow pallets complement my olive skin because I buy makeup and because of colour theory it always looks different on my skin. Eg. what is a neutral eye shadow pallet for a light olive
My whole makup journey has had the restart button pushed with the realisation of my olive'ness and now I dont know what to do.
I'm also someone who only has a modest beauty budget of like drugstore products so I find it extra hard aspecially in Aus where I find our product variety is more limited at times and stock is often low/non-existent and swatching is very unlikely to be possible.
omg I love how you gave us painting/color mixing lesson and used that to teach us about how to find the right foundation shade! So creative and informative. By far my favorite makeup channel on UA-cam
“I don’t know if any of it made sense” is your official sign off
TRUE
Alex, don't know if you'll be able to see this but you absolutely MUST TRY the Evy technology spf mousse if you haven't already. It is amaziiing! It leaves a slightly tacky finish but not shinny so it works besutifully with makeup or with a bit of powder if you don't wanna wear makeup. We need a review from you pweaaase! Ly!
Edit: I have the kids version- bigger package and doesn't sting my eyes which is a miracle 😂
It is so hard to match my pale Italian skin. I have melasma and rosacea. Ugh!!
I would love a consultation!!!
Many blessings!!!💖💖💖
Very informative video❤ thank you so much Alex! You are the best ❤ love how you try your best to explain your makeup knowledge and how you are trying to educate your audience on how to improve their makeup skills ❤ I am learning a lot since I started watching your channel!
I puzzle over my under/overtone constantly and this video was fascinating! Except am I warm, cool, what?? Super cool eyeshadow (like gray) makes me look dead, and deep mauve anywhere really does not work. But I'm quite fair. I don't knooooowww. More on color theory, please!
I'm also a very pale olive. Thanks for this, it was helpful. I wouldn't accept that red and blue are in my skin, but I SAW you do it. Thank you.
I feel like something is wrong with my eyeballs bc I cannot for the life of me see the colors people say they see in skintones. It drives me nuts bc I want to see it but I just don't. Even when told and shown I am like yeah nope I don't see it.
Hey it takes time! It's a skill set that takes practice for plenty of people :)
@remc0026 I'm 34 years old and have loved makeup since I was a teenager so now I'm like omg have I been walking around looking crazy all these years?!?! LMAO idk I feel like someone would have told me by now 🙃 I'm trying to learn it's just so hard when I don't have the "eye for it" like some ppl do!
Same. It's a complete mystery to me.
@miraclebub glad I'm not the only one....I watch Kackie here on UA-cam and she talks so much abt undertones and this color and that color and I'm just watching like 🧐. I do try but I'm more of a if it matches my skin good if not well then not good type of person. lol
@kam9543 right? Warm, cool, etc. Drives me nuts. Alex should offer a service to help poor fools like us! I'd legit pay just to finally have someone just tell me! 😂
Amen, sister. You are doing the Lords work. Plus, The artistic sensibility you bring to your vids is something I enjoy quite a lot. Big thumbs up!❤❤❤
These masterclasses you're just providing for free are amazing ❤️🔥❤️🔥 Thank you Alex!
Thank you! I had no idea why people were doing these color theory swatches.. very helpful!!❤
Colour theory and the colour wheel are great educational tools when it comes to understanding what colours work best, and who better to explain it than a visual artist. When I was young I was very fair with a pink undertone. As I've aged - and seasonally - the dominant shade on my face has darkened so that my summer shade is a light medium neutral with yellow undertones. My arms and hands are darker than my face so I use a warm contour or a bronzer to get some balance in tone. Awesome colour tutorial - thanks!
I’m Latina and my skin is naturally dark but my face is SO FAIR!!! it’s really difficult to find good makeup for me. Just so you have an idea my foundation is the Dior Neutral N 1.5 with glow finish which is one of the lightest colours they have. The rest of my body is tan! If I’m not careful I’ll end up looking like a ghost for sure. I loved this video and would love to get more info about colour and light study
This video was like an introduction for me. I have so many more questions and thoughts after this
This is great!
I like a cross between the peach and olive for you. 🥰
Thank you, thank you! This was incredibly helpful! I struggle with my neck & face being two different colors. Plus I have melasma spots. A lot to deal with on my face. But this video really helped reduce some of the anxiety.
I adore the way your mind works. I get the impression you are neurotically attentive to details, and you think outside the box to innovate and create and customize things for you. Are you hyper-creative? You just seem extremely plugged in.
I SOOOO love you, you have been the only makeup artist that I’ve found that actually teaches real life makeup issues.
I adore you, Alex. You are one of my favorite reliable sources of knowledge when it comes to make-up. Please keep illuminating us ❤
I found out that there is something called "silver undertones" which is kind of like the cousin to olive tone. It's basically just a nice way of saying you have blue grey undertone. I have a warm overtone and that equals olive-ish so olive foundations match me. Well, after I mix white pigment. In fact the way I found out about my undertone was doing exactly this. I could go on and on about silver undertones because I really had to go on a deep dive to find anything about it.
I think someone I know might actually have that! I did her makeup recently and I could talk forever about it because it’s so different than what I’ve done for myself or others. I’m honestly still a beginner, I just have an eye for mixing colours. Thankfully her makeup turned out beautifully even though I couldn’t explain why. But it could’ve so easily been a disaster!!! Thank god she chose her foundation and concealer herself. Her skin is cool, so I would’ve chosen a cool foundation without a second thought and it would’ve been much too pink. And if I had planned the rest based on that assumption instead of just going off instinct it would’ve been a disaster too! So I’d love to understand more if you want to share!!!
So interesting!! I think I might have this. I heard somewhere that if you’re really pale it’s harder to find your undertone because it’s so diluted that’s why so many pale olive people are walking around thinking they’re something else. P.s. would love to hear more info about it!
This video speaks to my soul. My whole life I have struggled with finding the right undertone.
I spent my youth believing that I had warm undertones but, strangely enough, every time I went to a store and asked for a foundation match they would choose something very pink, which I never understood.
Lately I've had the suspicious that I probably have a slightly olive undertone and since I've adjusted my makeup with that in mind, everything looks much better, but there is still something odd about my makeup.
If that weren't enough struggle, I have freckles all over my face and body, so if I apply a foundation with high coverage, it looks like I'm wearing a mask. But if I apply a skin tint or something with light coverage, it's not enough to conceal the redness that frequently appears on various areas of my face.
So, in short, I'm 39 and have never been able to find a good foundation match. Any suggestions?
sadly i have no great suggestion, but have you tried painting your freckles back on? (i‘m sry if this is something super obvious you’ve already tried)
What I like to do for everyday is just mix some green color corrector into my sunscreen as a base and diffuse a bit of concealer overtop with a big brush if there’s still too much redness peeking through. I’ve also found that green powder covers a bit of redness while accentuating freckles I can’t usually see, but it’s hard to find one that isn’t mint-colored.
@@paula-zzz I haven't tried and, while I appreciate the suggestion, I'm not going to try. My freckles are literally all over my face, in various sizes. If I were to try to recreate them by painting on top of foundation I would have to spend a lot of time doing so, and still, I'm sure it would look fake.
What I've been doing so far is trying to cover my redness with a green color corrector and then apply a skin tint. It kinda works, it's just not perfect.
@@EdwardDillingerTRONL green powders?? I've never heard of them! I normally use a green color corrector, then apply a skin tint on top and then concealer where needed. I haven't tried mixing the color corrector with the sunscreen, I will see how that goes. Any recommendations for green powder?
“Mario Badescu Special Healing Powder” is the one I use. It’s not a finishing powder per se, so it looks nicest when applied to bare skin. I think I’ve seen folks use a high end one that looks nice (Dior maybe) but that’s… not an option lol
I LOVE these types of videos! ❤
Recently I started mixing blue into my foundations to mute them, and it was a true game changer for me. I am neutral leaning slightly warm with some green undertones, but very muted over all. I look like I should wear light neutral or warm shades, but the closest matches for foundation are usually still too yellow or too peach. I read about using green or blue pigment mixers, so I tried it out. I have found that the right foundation shade for me looks quite grayish when I drop some on the back of my hand. I have also realized that my skin tone is actually light to medium, not fair or very light like I had thought for so long. Shades that I had thought were too dark were actually perfect when I muted the warmth a little bit. I am 50 years old and have worn makeup for decades, and I just found this out.
I love your station. I am learning so much! I feel like I’m attending a cosmetology class
I’m in my mid fifties and was just matched last year with a Dior olive shade. The lady at Sephora insisted I try it. It is perfection! My whole life I’ve just looked for the most yellow shade I could find and even those would somehow run pink or orange. Now if a company doesn’t have an olive shade foundation I can’t be bothered….
Could you pls explain the whole thing with 'muted' shades and how that relates to pale olive skin? I thought I understood it but frankly after I got the Kett Hydro foundation in Olive 2, I am questioning everything LOL. To my (untrained...) eye...the Kett looks literally red, which should be the opposite on the colour wheel...? Least this is what I thought. Halp! 😁
A muted colour is one in which the intensity (saturation) has been reduced (muted) by the addition of grey or the colour wheel opposite colour: muted pale olive skin is greenish but with the 'volume turned down'.
Why the makeup intended for olive skin should be reddish, I don't know, unless that brand is one that aims to 'neutralise' skin tones, so they're giving you pink to combat your green?
Dude! I have vitiligo and trying to match foundation is HARD work! The advice you just gave about your lightest shade is for concealer and the darkest shade is your contour 🤯🤯🤯 That’s really going to help me! Love all your work legend!
Would love to see how you would work with rosacea and heavily wrinkled under eye areas. Love ya 😘
The best olive shades i found for my tan skin is ooreal true match, sephota brand foundation, haus labs. Everything oulls too orange on me and i wasixing in green into my foundation but since finding these brands have my perfect match, i am so happy. My mkup is looking much better these days
I would love to see you do this to other skin tones/shades 😃
this is what makes alex stand out for me as a MUA!!! the talent is unmatched!! but the skin tone sure is 😭🫶
This is so fascinating Alex. I walked into a Kryolan makeup shop in London a few weeks ago and the lady instantly told me I was olive. I had an inkling because I've always struggled to find a foundation that actually matches me - they're always too yellow or too pink. I have a drugstore concealer (that's been discontinued! nooo) that matches beautifully but looks green next to every other drugstore (and high end) brand. It's a bloody nightmare being olive toned but pale AF. Thank you for this, it really does help to understand our lesser talked about (and provided for) skin tone
It really is SO difficult for the 🫒’s out here! I think brands have a hard time developing olive tones that don’t look grey 😑
@@AlexandraAnele the lady at Kryolan said she can only use their foundation (they do an olive undertone) as she too was olive (Italian, but pale!) - would love to see what you think of their foundations and concealers x
This helps a lot. I am 30+ and have never really been wearing make up on the regular, because it all just looked wrong on me. I am very pale and every foundation and concealer just looks variations of orange on me. After (finally) discovering colour correction paletts through youtube I am now wearing make up more often and not getting frustrated every time I try.
This was very helpful! Colour theory is so complicated (to me anyway) but you explained colour theory as it relates to makeup in a way that is easy to understand.
Wow I have such a hard time understanding undertone and what shades work and don’t. But the one thing I am grateful for that you said was about your friend that has a light face, medium neck and dark arms and those tips of what to do. Totally appreciate that
This reminds me also of that TikTok trend of "finding my color palette" in clothes and "Am I a silver or a gold."
Honestly if you could create a look for the girlies who still find to find their ~colors~, and what colors work for different skin tones.
what you're saying is obvious, but it's not "easygoing" to me.
I have pale skin with a lot of redness, discoloration and I tan easily.
Whenever I walk into Sephora I wanna find a magical foundation that matches my face and neck, also chest, arms and so on.
even though I know it's impossible I'm always got frustrated… when matches my face it doesn't match my neck or my chest, sometimes it works on part of my face but it doesn't match my forehead which is a little darker than my cheeks and chin
Great video…making me think about this. I have a very pale face with rosy undertones. My neck is also very light but more neutral and my arms have a little more color in the summer, neutral with a hint of warmth. No matter what I always have issues…if I match my neck I look ghostly, if I choose more rosy, I can see it my neck. Any warm foundation and I look orange. So I tend to go more neutral and bronze with more cool toned bronzers…with a hint of red. For video I go warmer…in real life I go light with cool undertones. Not sure why, I always get matched with a very dark shade that looks terrible when in natural light outside.
Thank you for this video…the search continues. And these suggestions will help a lot.
Love this. It helped... Did you see Lisa Eldridge added one or two shades to foundations and theres an olive tone one I think it 2.5,, just another for you to look at
Honestly, I’m still lost. I find it so hard to be aware of myself. I think it has to do with my adhd but I literally cannot see the colors in my skin
Nars vanilla concealer always looks really white under my eyes but then straight up peachy orange on my wrist. I think my face is neutral warm but my body is beluga white.
My neck is the darkest part of my body and my chest the lightest one. I also have an olive undertone especially in the cooler months. Foundation matching is a nightmare and blue mixer is my best friend. Or I just look bright orange. I often have the problem of mixing my foundation properly but then my powder is too orange. And a blue mixing powder doesn't not exist... and with my oily skin, powder is a must. So I guess I'm doomed.
Honestly your explanation is sooo similar to my oil painting teacher! And he had us follow along and do some really impressive paintings!
Amazing video, it actually explains some unconscious choices I make to balance out my makeup routine...see, I'm also very olive toned but probably fall more in the Light to Light Medium category due to some Melasma, so it's hard finding a close shade and usually use bronzers, blush, and highlighters as a way to subtly add dimension colors so that overall I balance out.
Have you tried the Rituel De Fille 3 drop weightless Serum Foundation...they actually have a pale Neutral to olive (105) and a Light golden to olive (115) color that actually shows very olive!
Please try the salt New York in n12! I'm the same skin tone as you and it'll work (also you'd love KiKi the owner/maker)
Hello Alexandra,
Thank you for this awesome demo :) I love your approach. In France we doesn't have youtubers who offer technical approach and ask themselves smart questions about the goal of makeup so thank you for being here.
As for the olive undertone, have you tried the KVD Good Apple in shade 008 light? It's the one I use on my jaw, chin, above my mouth and at the bottom of my cheeks so it matches my neck. This foundation is a bit drying but I prefer use it than a more hydrating one that doesn't match my neck... And for my forehead, I use the Nars Light reflecting foundation in Gobi.
xx
Alex, this video is gold. I'm a muted olive and I spent SO. MUCH. time and money trying to find my perfect shade match. When I found something that matched my neck perfectly (which is very green as yours), it made me look straight up dead, as you pointed out lol I figured out that what makes every single foundation look orange on me is actually not being MUTED enough. Now I go for neutral-warm muted shades (which is still very hard to find because it seems like every fucking foundation out there is saturated as hell) and it works soooo much better. You put into words what I noticed along the years and it makes so, so much sense. I wish I had watched this video like 10 years ago lol thank you so much for providing us thorough and useful information