Permanent lip makeup: from theory to practice

Larisa Volkova, international-class permanent makeup master, head of the professional permanent makeup school-studio Tattoo Esthetique, president of the International public organization “Association of Permanent Makeup Professionals” (Ukraine, Dnepropetrovsk)

Undoubtedly, permanent makeup (PM) can be a solution both from an aesthetic point of view and for congenital defects and lip injuries. But it is necessary to choose correction methods with caution. It should be remembered that the result of permanent makeup lasts for a long time, and removing unsuccessful work is an expensive and lengthy process.

Human lips have a complex geometric shape, so working with them is always interesting. Permanent lip makeup is a delicate work, a piece of jewelry, which depends on the professional experience and intuition of the artist, knowledge and understanding of facial geometry, as well as artistic vision. Using paints you can change not only the color of your lips, but also their shape. And choosing the right shape, in turn, can even solve the problem of raising or lowering the oval of the face.

Lip correction techniques

There are well-known correction techniques for permanent lip makeup.
Major changes in lip shape:

• lip reduction;
• adding fullness to lips;
• smoothing lip asymmetry.

The influence of the chosen color on the volume of the lips:

• use of light and dark colors on the lips (interaction of color rules);
• obtaining additional volume on light and dark lips (highlights, accents).

You can give expression to your lips by changing the pattern of your lips in the corners:

• laughing - raising the corners;
• whiny, sad - with the corners down.

To make the lips smaller, draw a clear outline and paint them tightly inside. To enlarge the lips, the contour is moved higher than the natural one, capturing the skin above the upper or lower lip, depending on which lip needs correction. To perform permanent lip makeup in volume, you can resort to using highlights: on the upper lip - in the area of the proboscis, on the lower lip - on the tubercles of the lips.

Taking into account facial geometry

To create a beautiful lip contour and fullness of color, it is not enough to follow only basic knowledge of makeup art. Always take into account the overall geometry of the face, as well as the principles of a harmonious combination of all its shapes and the technique of introducing pigment under the skin.

Before starting work, you need to determine the center line that runs through the middle of the nose and chin. The tip of the nose, for example, in women more often “looks” to the right, and if the angle of rotation of the nose is pronounced, this will affect visual perception. The client may feel that his lips are displaced.

Do not forget about facial activity in the lip area, which also affects the shape. For example, the effect of a skewed mouth, in which one side of the lips is raised and the other is clearly lowered. If the asymmetry is pronounced, immediately draw the client’s attention to it and agree on which part of the face you will start from when working with the new shape. After all, by diverting attention from one flaw, you can attract it to another, much more striking one.

Determination of changes should be performed in a state of physiological rest of the client's face.

Ideal lips are characterized by the same size of the upper and lower lips, not too thick and not too thin. The color is even, light red.
Let's consider some difficult situations that a specialist has to face when applying permanent lip makeup.

Needle selection

Today, companies that manufacture specialized equipment provide needles of various configurations and textures. All of them are designed to help the specialist in his work. It is good if it is possible to use several target needles for work. The ability to use them correctly will enable the master to minimize the traumatic nature of the work, reduce the time it takes to complete it, and achieve the best possible result of the procedure as a whole.

Natural effect without a clear lip contour

The goal of this work is to make the lip liner more expressive, using only color transfer techniques. To achieve the “naturel” effect, the natural shape of the lips is not changed. If the border of permanent lip makeup is different, then when direct sunlight falls, the difference between the old and new borders will be very noticeable both in profile and full face.
The lips can be more or less defined - it depends on the client’s preferences. The main thing is that this technique does not create the effect of “eaten lipstick.” To avoid this, it is better to select pigment colors that exactly match or are slightly lighter than natural ones.

We start work with the outline. To make a basting outline you will need a single-prong needle. The basting contour is a back-and-forth movement aimed at securing the sketch to the skin. It is performed in the same way as applying the main contour, only with zero pressure and fast speed of hand movement along the skin. This will allow you to get a smooth, but desaturated line. It can be secured with the main locking line on the second pass. Remember that the contour line should be very thin and neat, uniform in color and width.

Then we change the needle to any one that is convenient for painting. The naturalness of lip color lies in its transparency. Therefore, Flat or Magnum needles will be preferable here, since they apply the pigment in thin layers. Don't overload your skin with color. It is enough to complete 3-4 passes for complete coverage.

Be sure to maintain skin tension! The most common post-healing errors, such as uneven color, blemishes and even complete lack of color, are most often the result of failure to properly tension the skin and secure it to a small area of work. Do not try to tighten the entire upper or lower lip. If you divide your lips into sections of 1–1.5 cm, it will be easier to fix the tension.

The effect of dense shading, or the effect of lipstick

Most often, permanent lip makeup with shading is better combined with a clearly colored contour, or the contour is performed in the same tone as the shading. Shading is performed both on the area of the red border and stretches over the entire surface of the lips. This method is used to change the color, volume, shape, and relief of one’s own shape.
To make a contour in this technique, needles 1, 3 and 5RL are suitable. The more needles in the beam, the wider, bolder the contour line and the denser its color. Inserting a large number of needles under the skin will require more effort - but not the pressure of the master! This only applies to the capabilities of the device.

Unfortunately, many masters still use low-quality Chinese “handles” in their work, which cause more injury to the skin due to their lack of power. When using this type of equipment, move more slowly and insert the needle under the skin at a sharper angle.

Rice. 1. PM lips using 3D technique and fully colored lips

The number of passes along the contour is 2–3. For a more pronounced contour, you can take a darker or more saturated color in the palette.

Lip coloring can be done with rounds (R – round), magnums (Magnum) from 5 needles per solder. The movement technique can be spiral or zigzag when working with bundle needles. Flat needles correspond to long or short movements, reminiscent of working with a flat brush.

Rice. 2. PM lips without contour: before and after

Selection of equipment

If you still have little experience, it is better to use one color in your work. The polisher needs to learn to predict the outcome by analyzing the “healed” colors of one or more brands in your professional arsenal. It is necessary to study the behavior of color on different skins, the gradations obtained using needles of different configurations.

A specialist with sufficient experience and knowledge can try to work in layers, applying one color to another, or mixing several colors at the same time. Using this technique, you can neutralize the natural cool shade of the lips or correct old permanent makeup work. Afterwards, apply the desired shade of any selected color.

Permanent lip makeup using 3D technique

Perhaps this is the most colorful type of permanent lip makeup, which involves the use of color highlights to give relief to the lips. When color modeling the shape of the lips using this technique, the specialist must take into account the individual structure and proportional relationship of the facial geometry. If width predominates in the lips, the corners of the upper lip should extend upward - this can be the shape of a bow, the lower lip should be lightened diagonally, tapering towards the bottom of the lip, and the corners of the lips should be darkened.

In the permanent lip makeup technique, 3D color highlights can be applied not only to the red border of the lips, but also in the form of a light kajal above or below the contour. You can also highlight the corners of the mouth or wrinkles above the upper lip. All these techniques visually highlight the lips and rejuvenate the face.

Pigment color selection

This is the most interesting part of the work of a PM master. The color is selected according to the following criteria.

When performing permanent lip makeup, you can limit yourself to applying a contour, or you can try various shading options, done by two-thirds or half of the red border, or fill the surface of the lips completely. Start from your initial goals: add brightness or texture to your lips, change color, increase or decrease volume. Using different methods of applying permanent makeup allows lips to look natural, merging with natural colors, or, conversely, decorative.

First, decide whether you want a thick lip color or a transparent one. For the first, pigments of a denser texture, with a large proportion of coloring matter, are suitable. Then you should exclude colors that will not suit the client due to the presence of complementary shades relative to her skin color, teeth, pigmentation in the area of application or other unaesthetic defects.
Now it remains to determine the temperature of the desired color in accordance with the color of the lips. If you are not sure that you will determine correctly, take calm shades with a reddish-orange base. This will avoid possible blue discoloration in the healed work.

There is another interesting trick: if your lips have their own cool tone, contour with a warm shade of pigment. As a result, lips will become more juicy.

Try adapting makeup techniques to permanent makeup. The contour of the lips should be the color of the contour of healthy lips (red-brown), and it does not matter at all what the main color is chosen for painting. And if you use a warm pink color, you will create the effect of swollen lips.

You need to choose the color wisely, having thoroughly analyzed the trend of its change after complete healing: too bright will seem provocative, cold colors will have blue-violet tints, but the mother-of-pearl effect can only be used by clients with perfect lips and even skin color.

The most important thing is to understand that we are creating lips anew. Try different techniques, improve and hone your techniques! Invest in yourself! It will pay off - proven!

First published: KOSMETIK international journal, No. 3/2013