Beauty Break: Natural Nude Look

Sunday, September 5, 2010



The ever beautiful and recently slimmed down Jennifer Hudson recently got together with Sam Fine, celebrity makeup artist and creator of The Basics of Beauty, for a shoot showing off her gorgeous new look. Here, Sam shares his insider advice on how you can achieve this flawless and glowing face at home with just a few easy steps.

Coverage: Every great look begins great coverage. Jennifer has beautiful skin, but like many women of color, she has varied tones. I use foundation to unify those varying tones. One of my favorites is the Queen Collection Natural Hue Compact Foundation because it’s cream- to- powder, so it dries down to a powdery finish and looks really natural.

Bronzer: Bronzer is always a must for all women to illuminate their complexion. It’s important to choose a bronzer that’s one shade darker than your natural skin tone and apply it to the outer perimeter of your face to warm the skin and create a halo of glow. After applying bronzer, you can go back and layer over blush to give the skin a pop of color. On Jennifer, I used CoverGirl Natural Hue Mineral Bronzer and Cargo’s matte blush in Laguna.

Eyes: To create Jennifer’s classic, natural eye, I used a brown shadow. Shu Uemura makes a great pressed eye shadow in an array of shades – in this case, their Matte Taupe with Golden Flakes Eyeshadow works perfectly. For this look, I didn’t use a ton of liner, and totally avoided lining underneath her eyes to keep them soft. We used tons of mascara to enhance her look – my favorite is LashBlast from CoverGirl. I always like to apply a coat of mascara, and then move on to something else to let the first coat dry. I’ll come back a few minutes later, curl the lashes, and then layer on a few more coats of mascara to really build the lashes. This makes them much more dramatic and makes the curl hold well. It’s like spraying your hair with a coat of hairspray before using a curling iron.

Lips: To complete her look, I gave Jennifer a beautiful nude lip. The key to a nude lip is to begin by lining the lips with liner that is one shade darker than your natural lip color. Don’t worry about matching the liner to your lipstick – if you match it to your lips, it will look great with any shade of lipstick. After lining the lips, feather the liner towards the center of the mouth to great a base for the lipstick. Next, apply your lipstick. On Jennifer, I chose IMAN Cosmetics’ Luxury Moisturizing Lipstick in Citron. I finished by slicking on a golden gloss add dimension and shine. CoverGIRL’s Shine Blast Lip Gloss is perfect!