EXTRA: Don’t Let a Caucus Camera Catch You Looking Bad

Because you never know when, in the course being a good citizen by finding out which of the Republican presidential candidates deserves your vote, an errant TV camera might pan your face and make that small pimple look like a volcano about to blow, Patch offers these survival tips from Lindsay Donald, the lead makeup artist for Saturday’s nationally televised Republican presidential debate:

• Don’t try too hard to look like you just stepped off the beach. Donald says that too often, news anchors and others whose jobs put them before high-definition cameras wear foundation that is a shade or sometimes several shades too dark. 

• Don’t ring your eyes in black eyeliner when you’re going to be on television. You may think you look sultry and mysterious. In fact, you look like Rocky Raccoon.

• Eschew concealer. If tiny lines at the corners of your eyes betray a mirth-filled life. (That’s nicer, isn’t it, than saying that your age can be calculated by counting the wrinkles around your eyes – as if you were a tree whose maturity is gauged by counting the rings in the trunk?) The concealer will settle in the lines and wrinkles. Instead of hiding them, it will accentuate them.

• Ladies, we are clueless about how to apply blush. Never apply it lower than your nose; start in the middle of your check, straight down from the pupil of your eye, and circle back up on the apples of your cheeks.

• In general, play up your best features. Donald likes to accentuate eyes because they “tell a lot about a person – their emotions, whether they’re happy or sad,” she says.

Donald, a West Des Moines Valley High School graduate and current Johnston resident, is a self-employed makeup artist who works with local and national celebrities.