It was a fairytale ending – or rather, beginning – for upstart make-up artist Adeline Yeo. Despite having just two years of experience in the business, the 21-year-old was crowned the top professional make-up artist at the recent Asean finals of Shu Uemura’s Beauty Art Make-up Competition.

Yeo, an art director and freelance make-up artist, beat seven other finalists from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines to take home the top honours.

Making her win all the more memorable was the fact that she had defeated hot favourite and the Singapore champion, Ginger Lynette Leong, 38. Yeo was runner-up in the local leg of the competition.

The look she came up with that clinched the Asean finals is a colourful, graphic one reminiscent of ocean waves.

The vibrancy of the look and her technical proficiency had the five judges seeing stars at the finals, which was held in Kuala Lumpur last Wednesday.

The judging panel comprised one industry insider from each participating country and Kakuyasu Uchiide, Shu Uemura’s international artistic director.

“Her look wowed,” says Malaysian judge Biby Chow, a hairstylist and make-up artist who owns Cutting Edge Hair Studio in Kuala Lumpur.

“She showed off her make-up skills instead of employing showy means such as fantastical lashes to attract attention.”

The four countries were each represented by the top two winners of their local competitions.

Each contestant had to create an artistic interpretation of the theme Mother Nature within one hour at a live demonstration.

This inaugural regional competition was also a rare chance for make-up artists to pit their skills against one another and give their imagination free rein.

“Artistic make-up is how make-up artists express their creativity,” says Uchiide. “When a make-up artist does a makeover for clients, she has to give them what they want.

But in such a competition, she gets to express her own point of view through her work.” As Yeo puts it, creative make-up is like “creating a painting on someone’s face”.

The works at the finals lived up to that, ranging from diamante-studded lips to peacock-blue eyeshadow painted to look like a mask over the model’s eyes and nose – artistic showpieces you would not normally see on the streets.

Home-grown celebrity make-up artist Clarence Lee, who counts stars like Zhang Ziyi and Lin Chi-ling among his clients, agrees that creative make-up is how he can indulge in his avant-garde sensibilities.

Says Lee: “There is a lot of room for creativity and to let my fantasies run wild. I can transform a person completely and make her unrecognisable while telling a story on the face.”

He was awarded Shu Uemura’s Botan Brush Award at the Singapore finals in recognition of his contribution to the make-up scene here and international standing.

He was chosen by an internal panel of judges from a pre-selected list of six nominees. There are about 20 top make-up gurus in Singapore, including Lee, Peter Khor and Larry Yeo, who specialise in fashion make-up and have been involved in high-profile shoots for fashion glossies.

Uchiide says the overall standard of make-up artists in Singapore is high and “make-up artists here are well recognised by their peers around the region”.

While the make-up techniques used, such as blending, gradation and lash application, are the same whether it is for artistic make-up or everyday looks, creative make-up is not something you would wear on a regular basis, he says.

The colours used are more intense, face paint might be used and make-up artists often use props such as false lashes, glitter and stick-on crystals to dress up the model’s face.

“Of course you can still take elements that inspire you from artistic make-up and incorporate those into daily wear,” says Leong.

“For example, instead of using metallic shades all over your face, you could limit them to your eyelids.” Singapore’s two contest whizzes, Yeo and Leong, put down their magic wands briefly to tell Urban how they turn make-up into works of art.

karentee@sph.com.sg

This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times.