New Brand – Terri Tomlinson Flesh Tone Color Wheel

1 Review

1. 

   pleasedLapwing1

   Reply

   I had the opportunity to use Terri Tomlinson’s Flesh Tone Colour Wheel a few months ago in a seminar that our Union’s Make-up Department put on with Terri herself teaching it. It was her first time in Canada teaching this specific course.

   The course cost $80 CDN all in per person for 3 hours all hands on. The course included her Flesh Tone Colour Wheel ($12), and her 10 colour mini kit sized flash palette (Rescue Palette) ($70). It was a deal from our Union considering the course costs $175 US per person for 3 hours in the US.

   The good thing about the course was that it was attended by 10 experienced MuA’s, so no novices, beginners, or intermediates, so a level playing field. Having said that. At first glance at the Flesh Tone Colour Wheel may seem straight forward, however through hands-on application it was a completely different story. For starters one has to be an expert and fluent in colour theory to begin with and I mean an expert, as the class begins with “What colour is created when you mix 3 colours together?” and she meant skin tone shades. And it goes on from there.

   Using her Rescue Palette (think of MUFE’s Flash Colour Palette), was a bit like playing well… a make-up artist, mixing primary colours to get a Caucasian skin tone or even a darker skin tone for an African-American skin tone. The challenge was not creating a “mushroom” coloured shade as Terri puts it. With a lot of hands-on and trial-and-error, including a lot of mistakes from everyone, we managed to match everyone’s skin tone in the class, but it took the full 3 hours to do it, and even then we still had confused looks on our faces and we all could’ve used more class time. As with all things, proficiency comes with practice. On a side note, the great thing about the course was that Terri was engaged with one-on-one with everyone in the class making us use our brains through trial-and-error, she gave hints but no solutions, so that part was great and enjoyable.

   Okay the point of this exercise was to create a foundation shade that matches a specific skin tone using primary colours. The Flesh Tone Colour Wheel is just a guide that helps in matching the over and under tones in the skin. Also, if you’re a really savvy Make-up Artist, all you need is her Rescue Palette in your kit instead of carry foundations around. Also this course reminded me of taking PAX mixing courses and how very similar they are.

   On the professional side of things we have hundreds of foundations in our Trailers and Rooms and the speed of correct application is the top order of the day. So the mixing and blending of colours is a bit time consuming for us, even in the S F/X and Prosthetics world of make-up, they even do minimal mixing and blending of colours because everything is off the shelf. The only exception is mixing adhesives with thinners to get the correct consistency due to the local temperature and humidity of a place.

   In Summary, we all purchase foundations with the correct shade and then apply it without a second thought of mixing it with another tint or tone to match a skin tone, because we don’t have to thanks to the industry. So in retrospect, this Flesh Tone Colour Wheel is about 90 years too late and would’ve been perfect back in the 1920’s through to the 1940’s when MuA’s had to custom mix and blend their foundations on the spot. However, in today’s world, with so many foundations out there, this Flesh Tone Colour Wheel is handy to determine who is cool, warm and neutral toned. Also her Rescue Palette is a great exercise in finding out what colour combinations create what colour, but it terms of practicality, to create a foundation shade using primary colours, is well, just a novel technique that is obsolete when you can just go out and buy a foundation shade.

   Cheers everyone.