Practice makes perfect when it comes to makeup

Until recently it hadn't occurred to me to practise applying makeup. It seemed a tad self-indulgent at my age, if not plain silly. After all, I'd been wearing makeup for 30-odd years, hadn't I? I knew what suited me, didn't I?

The truth was, no, I didn't any more. Having grown up in that blusher slashed across the cheekbones, three colours on your eyes era of the 70s and 80s, I now felt in a bit of a rut. Clearly, those looks were outdated, but the new ones didn't seem to do anything for me. Lipstick didn't seem to stay on in quite the same way as before, and the colours available didn't seem to suit me. I couldn't find a foundation that would hide my rosacea without looking like a mask. My favourite products had been discontinued. I realised that at the age of 42, I was feeling the same way about makeup as I felt about fashion - that it was, in some obscure way, no longer for me.

As I was muttering darkly about this one day, surprisingly it was my husband who came to the rescue. As a photographer, he'd bought a book on makeup for photography, and alongside it, a general book on makeup. This proved to be a godsend - Making Faces, by Kevyn Aucoin.

I had never heard of Kevyn Aucoin, but even if you haven't either, you're familiar with his work. Prior to his early death from a pituitary tumour, Aucoin was the leading makeup artist of the nineties, largely responsible for the looks that graced every magazine page and red carpet star during that time.

Aucoin seems to have had a rare ability to bring out a woman's inner beauty, and his approach to makeup was both catholic and inclusive, "makeup should be fun and not fascist". You won't find any 'shoulds' or 'must's in his books - only clear instructions on how to get the effect you're looking for.

I have two of his books (though I hope to buy the rest): Making Faces and Face Forward. In them, you'll find looks for young and white women, it's true, but also older women, black women, Asian women, outsize women, even men. Nude looks, fantastic looks, coloured looks, neutral looks, drag makeup, makeup for special occasions, quick looks for daytime, makeup for women who hate makeup.

In Making Faces, Aucoin deals with the different areas of the face, detailing different looks for eyes, lips, cheeks, skin, eyebrows and then the face as a whole. From this, I learned a better way to apply my mascara, and how to use my eyelash curlers correctly. In Face Forward you get more of the same, including different ways to balance the face (dark eye, dark lip; dark eye, light lip etc, which finally taught me quite why I can't wear 60s-style makeup) but also familiar famous faces made up in very different ways - check out Martha Stewart as Veronica Lake.

However, in both books, the faces that I find the most interesting are those that belong to ordinary women, whom he transforms into great beauties with only subtle changes. If nothing else, every woman over 60 should look at how amazingly glamourous Aucoin's mum is once he's finished with her, even allowing for the airbrushing.

I read each book from cover to cover, then worked my way through the individual eye looks, lip looks, whole-face looks etc, in the privacy of the bathroom. Some didn't suit me, but many that I thought wouldn't, actually did. It really pays to shake up your routine a little like this, to try a 'Hollywood' eye, or to mix your own shade of lipstick. The bottom line is, it's FUN. It's like rediscovering your love of dressing-up.

It's also useful. From the styles I tried, I now have half a dozen different 'looks' that I can quickly apply without really having to think, rather than the one look I'd been using for years. I use far fewer products but make more of them. And I know what to do if I've only got five minutes to switch from day to night, or if I've had a bad night and it shows.

Kevyn Aucoin's books are available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.