Martha Ryan - Makeup Artist: How It All Started ♥

I receive a lot of messages from young girls still in school wondering what course I did to pursue Makeup Artistry, if I'm self-taught or how I started freelance. I do answer each of these girls in detail but for a more in-depth answer, I thought I'd feature a blog-post explaining it all from then to now!

Me doing one of my first Debs clients, August 2012

I don't consider myself massively successful, this is only the beginning and I have a lot of work to do. But I do appreciate the fact that I'm a self-employed almost 21 year old running my own business 7 days a week, maybe 6 if you exclude my lazy Sundays ;) Ha! For that I feel is an achievement in itself. I'm not very materialistic, into designer brands or expensive jewelry. I work for happiness and always will. I feel that these are the extremely early days of my career and hopefully will be updating this blog-post in years to come, looking back on what was.

I did my Leaving Cert at 16. I was always the youngest of my class and by the time I finished school I was the youngest of my year and even the year below me! I couldn't wait to get out and start my life. My options had always been Interior Design, Fine Arts, Animation or Makeup Artistry. I've always been a creative person and wouldn't ever do anything else. I'd rather live on kidney beans in an alley doing what I love than pursuing a well paid 9-5 job I wasn't happy in. (haha kidney beans in an alley?) Anyway, I figured I'd shoot with Makeup Artistry for a year and see how it went. If I felt I wanted more, I'd do a different art-based course afterward. 

(A few sketches I did while in school to the left)

It was around October of sixth year when I applied for 'Theatrical & Media Makeup Artistry' in Senior College Dun Laoghaire. The course runs from September - May and is full-time. I did a lot of online research on www.qualifax.ie and figured it was the best one out there. Because I was only 16, my mum took students to pay for my course as I couldn't even get a job at that stage. The kit itself was around the €2000 mark - so serious commitment and saving is needed.

Makeup that Michelle
Regazzoli did for Debs '10

A lot of successful Artists I know studied there such as Little Kiva, The Make Up Fairy & Michelle Regazzoli-Stone. My final push to apply was when I got my makeup done for a Debs by Michelle Regazzoli herself.
She told me that she studied there and I knew how brilliant she was. 

To ensure a place in the course, you have to apply on the very first day as there is such a high demand. When I attended, I heard there were over 500 applicants a year to a 90 student course. As Makeup Artistry is on the up & up, I'd imagine it's even more so now. There were some absolutely brilliant girls in my class. Some had the talent, some had the creativity. I felt that I ranked a lot lower than them and wouldn't have the utmost confidence as I'd compare myself to my super creative friends, everybody older of course. Still, I found it a great way to make some life-long friends. You may even know some of my college friends - Jessica - MakeUp, SD Makeup, Clara Salinger Makeup to name a few!

When everybody thinks of courses in Makeup Artistry, they think "that must be easy enough", right? I thought the same. Before the course commenced we were called for a group interview and the year-head literally said that "If you think it's going to be all lipstick and eyeshadow, leave now!" No, she really did. She went on about how hard it was going to be and that they have a huge drop-out rate. I was committed so I happily nodded along. Boy, was she correct. The course was nothing like I expected. For an hour on each Thursday & Friday morning we got the chance to practice.
The rest was all theory, science, retail selling, skin-care etc. 

A sample of my makeup portfolios at the time

Every week we had a new exam from the get-go as well as our final exams in May. The continuous exams were recorded in our 2 portfolios 'Media' (SFX) & 'Fashion & Photographic' that we had to build up throughout the year. Every night I would go home and spend hours working on it. For each look we had to include an introduction to it explaining why you chose it, a mood board of ideas surrounding it, before & after photos, a client consultation form, a step-by-step, a face-chart, product list and of course the look in question. We had dozens of these to do. I was delighted to see the back of Harvey Norman's printers by May!

Then came the boring stuff, in my opinion. I liked biology but the classes and notes were too detailed and the tests were just like school. There was also retail selling which we had to do projects for, business studies and skin-care. We had weekly and final exams in all of these subjects. Skin-care required it's own portfolio filled with case studies of our friends and families skin. A4 pages describing skin-types! We had to analyze faces on a weekly basis, writing down their imperfections and listing why they had them & what natural ingredients could help them. Knowing alcohol levels in products I was never going to use, explain accompanying skin-type symptoms and knowing all of the technical names was just something I didn't care much for. I found this subject the hardest, despite receiving the weekly facials and shoulder massages in class ;)

My body-painting model for end of year show

In the midst of the madness, they brought us to different workshops - nails, henna, tanning, special effects and more. We also did an end of the year show, showcasing body-painting. For that reason, it really is a great course to get you as many qualifications & experiences as possible. I'm qualified in things I can't even remember at this stage. Something everybody agreed on at the time was that it really did need to be a 2 year course with all of the work required by us.

1 year, 3 portfolios, many tears, laughs and multiple qualifications later, I finally finished and passed. I found out my results on holidays and literally cried all day with relief. My hard work had paid off! I was eager to start life in the real world. Unfortunately, the real world wasn't as ready for me as I anticipated. Something people don't necessarily tell you in training is how difficult it is to find a job afterward. I applied to every single makeup counter in Dublin that would take my CV. The truth is, no matter how brilliant you are at makeup or how creative you are, you need retail experience and that's a fact. To work at a makeup counter is just a retail job in a certain sector, as opposed to applying makeup all day, unfortunately. 

Finally when I was 18 I decided to suck it up and gain some retail experience so I could pursue life on the counters. I worked at Dunnes Stores from roughly December '12 - February '13. Before that, I had done a few nixers here and there but nothing steady and my skill definitely wasn't up to scratch. While working, I took a break from Makeup Artistry. I became ill in February and took three months sick-leave before handing in my notice in May. Knowing I had the stress of work at the back of my head all the time wasn't helping my illness or recovery. Finally, June came and I got a text from a local girl asking to do her & her mums makeup. I hadn't worked properly in months, only a job here and there if I was up to it but nothing serious. I did her makeup and it gave me the satisfaction I'd been missing the past few months. I feel as though I need to make a difference to feel happy.
Working at a cash register certainly didn't fulfill that in the past like doing somebody's makeup did.

One person would get their makeup done and tell several people about it. Suddenly my calendars were starting to fill and eventually I was too busy to look for work, too busy for something part-time, too busy for anything else other than makeup. My life started to become clearer and the satisfaction I got from peoples reactions was an explosive feeling of joy. With all of the practice I was getting my skill started to improve & I started to learn new techniques. With every client that mentioned she likes things a certain way I started to think 'Your way works too! No, your way works better!' All of a sudden I was learning things from making mistakes, learning things from trying new things and it all came down to practice. My dreams of working for myself full-time were becoming a reality. I registered as self employed and suddenly opportunities were hitting me up left, right and centre. Clients would need their makeup done for TV appearances, newspapers and brides would put all of their faith in me. People were starting to know my name and my work.
This is something I never expected.

Overall, I believe that practice has gotten me to where I am today. I did the course, I have the qualifications, I learned the rules, but only when I was left to my own devices did I improve. It didn't happen after one video I watched, one experience I had or any one thing at all. Every day I was improving and didn't even see it until I compared my work side-by-side.

The first photo - September 2012. The second photo - December 2013

Now I have 13,000+ people on my Facebook page, 5,000+ on my Instagram and I couldn't be more grateful. I still have days that I compare myself to every other Makeup Artist out there and wonder what they're doing better than me and how I can be more like them, but that wouldn't be me. Everybody's going in different paths and I need to learn to trust my journey! Sometimes I get butterflies imagining what life holds 5, 10, 20 years down the line. And it's all thanks to my lovely supporters that keep me ticking over! 

Senior College Dun Laoghaire is now Blackrock College of Further Education and the course layout and qualifications have changed slightly. I only mentioned my course in the post as that's in relation to me, but I think I'll feature another blog-post about picking the right makeup course. I don't want to be bias and want you to explore all of your options, because what works for me may not work for you.
Everybody's different! :)

Thanks for reading! Martha xx