The Life of a Professional Makeup Artist

The Life of a Professional Makeup ArtistMakeup artistry is an increasingly popular profession to go into. Have a quick look at a directory of courses available at colleges up and down the country and you'll be presented with a plethora of options. Given the enthusiasm for makeup that many young girls have, it's hardly surprising that it's turning into quite a popular career choice, and certainly, from the outside it must seem like a tremendously glamorous career.
As with anything else however, the life of a professional makeup artist can be incredibly hard work. In order to start, you will be expected to have a qualification, and so will have spent time and money on gaining this qualification. That's the easy part.
Most makeup artists work freelance. This is particularly true of makeup artists who work in the media sectors (the most sought after jobs) as almost all sectors of the media are predominantly self-employed. This has two significant implications.
The first is that any working makeup artist will be expected to have their own stock of professional makeup provisions and supplies. Look in any half-decent makeup artist's makeup bag and you will see something that is crammed full of products running into thousands of pounds. Makeup artists' provisions certainly don't come cheap, and they need to have a wide selection available for all sorts of work - beautifying, scars, wounds; the whole gamut of applications.
The second implication of working freelance is the insecurity of the job and the time spent getting work. Any freelancer will tell you that it can be enormously stressful living from job to job, and there are periods where you may not get any work at all. It's these periods that you may find yourself constantly hustling for work without getting any, and you may find yourself working harder than ever for nothing.
This is not to say that's it's not fantastic. The advantage of freelance work is that you have the freedom to be your own boss, and owning all your equipment means you have no responsibility to anyone but yourself. It just means that you have to be prepared to put in some hard graft in order to get work. Commonly, freelancers would expect to spend at least 50% of their time hustling, and the other 50% actually working. If that doesn't sound like you, perhaps this isn't the life you were made for.