Color Correction

I just returned from a wonderful AAM Convention. Conversations always seem to lead to color corrections and asking how I would correct certain residuals. Every practitioner is faced with corrections, since there is so much work out there that requires it, today. We actually teach this in our Primary Training at Beau, for this very reason.

Black brows that need to be corrected to brown, gray brows that need to be corrected to a mid-range, warm brown, blondes that have dark brows that need to be made lighter and warmer, purple brows and even several shades of pink and coral are common. Although, green and turquoise eyebrows are rare, they may still present themselves to you.
Although correction may seem overwhelming, let’s break it into 3 categories to correct: Warm, Cool or Purple.

Correcting Warm
In my mind, warm is not a correction. To me, it’s a simple cover-up with a cool or taupe shade. I refer to taupes as being cool shades that range from light blondes, such as Face Inks Sandy Blonde to dark brunettes, such as Coffee Bean. Taupe has no warmth in it…no red or orange and may range from light to dark beiges through brows. It is safe to consider all taupe shades as being cool.

To cool down a warm shade, take a cool color and tattoo over the warmth. I generally use a 3-Slope or 3-Micro and with this cooler or taupe shade, I will create hair strokes through the warmth. If I see too much warmth showing through, I will shade in between the hair strokes with either the same color or a lighter version of it. I generally use the same color with a dilution and swipe the 3-Slope side to side to shade between the hairs. If you don’t use a Slope, use a 5 or 7 round or a 5-Magnum to shade. Move quickly, to avoid a solid eyebrow unless that is what your client is looking for. It’s that easy!

Now, let’s discuss the intensity of the orange or warm residual. If it is just a hint of warmth that may present itself due to a long overdue touch-up, I will ignore it. I will still add a small drop of warmth the taupe, especially, if I am using Face Inks Soft Ash. I may choose Butternut or Butterscotch for this small drop for my light to medium brunettes. I like to see a little gold in my taupes when they heal as opposed to tones that are too cool.

If the warm residual is very orange, red, pink or coral, I may choose to leave out any additional warmth. I let the residual work for me.

If I am using a darker brunette shade, I will warm it up since the darker taupe shades tend to be much cooler. I may choose a drop or two of henna or cocoa.

~ With all corrections….Smear your correcting color over the area you intend to correct. Allow it to dry! You should be able to see a preview of your outcome right then and there. If you cannot, adjust your formula until you do.

Correcting Cool
As I said, above, I don’t see warm residuals as a correction. They are a cover-up. However, cool tones are a different story. They must be corrected.

Let’s start with blondes with gray eyebrows. This cool residual appears harsh and lacking harmony with their skin tones and you will find that your eyes will continue to bounce back to these disturbing brows as much as you wish they wouldn’t. All they need is some warmth and voilà…you will suddenly see this person’s eyes and no longer see her brows first.

I generally correct them with Face Inks Butternut and Butterscotch, starting with half and half for simplicity, in the event I need to repeat this process. I smear it over, allow it to dry to see if it dries to my desired color, stamping out the gray.

If not, I will adjust it. Perhaps, I need more Butterscotch for more orange or more Butternut to lighten and warm. Once I see the correction I am looking for, I proceed with a 5-round and lightly go over just the area I wish to correct. If this client wants a fuller brow, I will add once I get her color corrected and not before. If she has areas of her eyebrow that are unflattering, such as; a low tail or a low front, I will perform a salt removal at the same time on these areas.

I do not apply the same pressure on a correction as I would an initial procedure. This would make the correction less effective. The idea is to place the corrective color over the color to be corrected and not get down into it.

The salt removal is the opposite. You want to get under the color you wish to lift out so there is more depth required for this procedure.

Brunettes that present gray eyebrows may need gold if they have medium brown hair or they may want or need red tones if they are more auburn.

For the gold, I will use Butterscotch and a small amount of Butternut. For Auburn or warmer hair that is naturally warm, I will choose, Cocoa and Butterscotch, or Henna and Butterscotch. I recommend trying them both to see the effect you are looking for.

To correct black eyebrows, I generally select Pumpkin and Henna and sometimes a drop of New Pumpkin. This eradicates the black and you will see this as you allow it to dry over the black area.

Correcting Purple
This is easy! Goldfinch straight or mixed with Milk Chocolate or try our new Purple Corrector. The difference in correcting purple tones as opposed to gray tones is purple already has red in it. Red and blue make purple. Avoid any corrector with red. It must be a green-yellow and not an orange yellow since orange is red and yellow. Our Purple Corrector has the green-yellow in it for an effective correction or use the goldfinch and a brown with no red. Soft ash and Goldfinch is another great purple corrector.

Correcting the Occasional Turquoise or Green
The opposite of green is red so although this is shocking when it presents itself, it is not difficult to correct. Adding Face Inks Henna to a warm brown generally does the trick. Do not use Taupe shades as this may bring you a deeper green tone. Be sure your selection is warm and smear it over the area and allow it to dry. It may not be as intense as you think and you don’t want to over-compensate the red tones. You surely don’t want to give her red brows if she needs a neutral shade.

Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green

I am sure you’ve heard of the brilliant book Blue and Yellow Do Not Make Green. It was written by Michael Wilcox, and no one explains color better than he does.

Why did he choose this catchy title? Because blue and yellow don’t always make green. It depends on the base of the yellow and the base of the blue. So, you get the idea. The base of the color will change the outcome. 

Here’s an example that pertains to permanent makeup: Why do we see so many purple eyebrows? If the base of a brown pigment is purple, it had to be made with a blue and red or a blue-based black and red pigment. If you add a warm yellow-orange or an orange to warm it up (Butterscotch), you will end up with a very purple eyebrow. The reason behind this is that red and yellow made the orange that you added to warm up the brown, which was made with red and blue or a red and blue-black pigment. This made the purple base.

The red from the orange, which was added to warm the brown, already had a purple base. This purple base that was obviously made with red and blue just became more prominent. So… you never want to use a brown with a purple base. How do you tell? Smear your colors out on white paper and run them under water. You’ll see the base of the color right there.

To correct these purple brows, you need a green-yellow (Goldfinch), and not a warm one. The green-yellow is cool, and it has no red to accelerate the purple in the brows. Goldfinch with a little Milk Chocolate is a terrific corrector for purple eyebrows. I use a 5 round and don’t go as deeply as I would in a regular or initial procedure. You want the corrective formula on top and not at the same level or below the purple residual.

I think it is important that we understand what creates purple brows. If they are occurring in your practice, consider changing the browns you are selecting or try another pigment line.

Please Slow Down...

My experience in teaching all these years is as follows and I still find it sad. Graduates will leave us as well as other primary classes and begin to work and instead of calling their trainers (like us) right away to report a retention problem that we can walk them though easily, they invest in another pigment line or another machine, a whole new line of topical anesthetics, several classes looking for answers, then more pigments and it goes on and on. They finally come full circle, an expensive circle, and end up calling or returning to visit and watch a procedure or class and find they had it all right from the beginning and all they had to do was SLOW DOWN!!!!  

I have so many practitioners that can avow to this discouraging cycle and I always feel so badly they suffered through this. We know how well Face Inks works since we all use it and we are the fastest growing company in the country. 

Ten minute eyeliner, 20 minute brows, 8 minute lips are all nonsense if you are an artist. They believe these myths and question everything they learned and purchased. All they had to do was come and visit or at least call. 

When our graduates return and see how simple it was and there is no panacea with a pigment or a machine. It lies all in our hands!!! 

If you are a Beau Institute graduate and you are struggling, please call us or please come visit. You can assist us while we are working and mix our colors and we will explain every step of what we are doing. Our clients never mind. They know we are a teaching institute. Sometimes, if I don’t have an apprentice, they will say; no one is here today? They enjoy your company!

It could be one procedure that you find intimidating or not retaining as well as you would like. Whatever it is please come back. 

If you have been away from the profession for some time, then schedule a day or two of hands-on procedures rather than go out and keep buying that elusive and non-existent solution.

We tell our trainees on the first day that we don’t go away and those that have called on us know that is exactly how we built our reputation. No one should ever be uncomfortable or embarrassed to come back and say they need help.

My passion and all of our trainers feel the same way and that is our success is YOUR success. Our passion is to raise the barre so we all do beautiful work and fall in love with performing permanent makeup. 

I want to be clear that we encourage you to take many, many courses and attend many conferences over the years but you must get your basics down first. Additional classes and conferences will make so much more sense and you will leave them with so much more. 

Beware... White is Your Enemy!!!

While flying out to Las Vegas for the SPCP Conference, I had begun to write this article regarding the abuse of white pigment in the skin.  Low and behold, Pat Gaultier presented at the conference and her topic was Black and White and it was as though she was finishing my sentences. Pat was simply wonderful in presenting both the verbal and visual ramifications of using white to attempt corrections, cover-ups or to highlight particular areas (other than Montgomery Glands on areola).

On behalf of those who did not get to attend, especially if you are fairly new to the profession, my suggestion is you think of white pigment as your enemy and not your new best friend. 

There are many practitioners new to this profession and although extremely talented, do not fully understand the downside of attempting to cover up a mistake with white or beige or highlighting a lip with white or beige. They are not in this profession long enough to see this downside of using white in these instances and it won’t be pretty. 

White is titanium dioxide and the only color in our spectrum that is opaque. This is why many believe they can use it to cover something up. It is not sheer and translucent like all the rest of our pigments. It is dense and quite heavy in weight and never, ever leaves the skin. It will simply outlast any color it is mixed with because it is heavier and it will eventually float to the top like sour cream.  

To appreciate the density, picture the lifeguards at the beach. They often apply zinc oxide, which is mostly titanium dioxide, across their noses in a big white strip to deflect the sun. It is quite dense. If they were to place a stripe of any of our other colors across their noses, they would be sheer. None of our other colors would provide protection to their noses since they do not have the same density or weight that titanium dioxide has. 

Light skin tone pigment or camouflage colors that would match a Fitzpatrick 1-3 will contain titanium dioxide which is white.  Attempting to cover up a mistake with a light skin tone pigment may first appear to be effective but it will be short lived. Sooner, as opposed to later, the pigment particles of the beige in this camouflage color will vacate and all that will remain is a yellowy white. It may even appear to be raised and sit on top of the skin surface. It is unsightly! I have even seen white or the yellowish white appear 3-dimensional.

We see these attempts all the time. They are generally made around the eyes, especially on the outer canthus where the top eyeliner was extended too far into the outer corner of the eye, bottom eye lids where the liner was crooked or uneven, eyebrows that have been make too long or low or uneven in the front (both medially and laterally) and around the lips.

Let’s first take a step back and ask why these attempted cover ups are necessary? Why these mistakes? If practitioners took the time to draw on these procedures prior to tattooing, these mistakes would have been avoided. Yes, even a lash enhancement should be drawn on to see how the lashes are seated and the eyelids are shaped. Only then can you identify the subtleties for the most flattering and perfect placement of color.

Lips must be drawn on as well and certainly eyebrows. If measuring tools are used on eyebrows and you check them for evenness before tattooing, there would be no reason for attempting a cover up. Drawing on your procedures is critical to insure you never have to do a cover up.

The latest trend is using white around the lips as a highlighter or to create the illusion of fullness and a vermillion border. This is a dangerous practice since the white will remain forever and possibly yellow, while the lip color will eventually fade. In a few years this will not be attractive. It is not over the counter makeup! White never leaves the skin and eventually yellows so imagine this client up the road. Ask any tattoo artist! If the white of a tiger’s eye is tattooed, it will eventually yellow and have to be tattooed again to whiten it.

This is not the first time practitioners have abused the use of white. Years back, some were attempting filling in wrinkles with white, tattooing the darkness under the eyes with white and tattooing it on the wet line. All of these proved to be great disasters. The under eye areas clumped with whitish yellow and could not be laser removed since white will turn back on contact with a light source. These women were maimed.  My late and dear friend, Patti Pavlik, wrote an article, “I Have this Needle Now What Else Can I Do With It”? We addressed these issues of white being used wrongly and the ramifications of doing so. Here we are a decade later addressing these very topics. 

How do you rid the skin of white when laser is not an option? Salt removal has proven to be the best solution in my practice. Crooked French Eyeliner procedures where the white was uneven next to the black eyeliner, I did a salt removal and it worked perfectly. Clumps of white that turned yellow used in attempted cover-ups were also removed with salt solution. Salt solution has never let me down! It is the safest and most effective pigment removal system ever discovered.

Email us at rosemarie@beauinstitute.com for our salt removal instructions and post care.

 

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