S114

Make Up For Ever S114 Artist Face Color ($23.00 for 0.17 oz.) is a light-medium brown with soft, warm undertones and a semi-matte finish. It had semi-opaque pigmentation, which was buildable, with a smooth, dense texture. It's a lighter shade, so for contouring, I could see it working on light to light-medium skin tones, and it could also work as a subtle, brown blush. The powder blended out seamlessly on the skin and took little work to get it there. It wore well for eight and a half hours on me.

Overview of the Formula

The formula is supposed to have "intense color payoff" with a "long-lasting finish." The range is split into three types--Highlighters, Sculpting Powders, and Blushes--that is easy to determine by the first letter of the shade name (H for Highlighter, S for Sculpting, and B for Blush). There are three finishes--matte, shimmer, and pearl but was less obvious. In fact, the majority of the "matte" shades were more like semi-matte or natural matte where there were no distinctive shimmer particles but they seemed to take on the natural finish of the skin, which gave the "mattes" a particularly seamless finish on the skin but might be dewier on oilier skin types than desired. None of the 34 shades available were frosted or metallic except three of the highlighters (H100, H106, H312).

The pigmentation ranged from medium to opaque, depending largely on the shade, though they were always buildable if they were not opaque in a single layer. Some of the deeper, more matte shades were less forgiving and took more effort to diffuse and blend, even when I used a lighter hand or a more feathery brush. The texture was smooth, velvety, and moderately dense without any powderiness or dustiness in the pan. The formula has lasted between eight and ten hours on me.

You can view swatches of all of the blushes, all of the highlighters, and all of the sculpting powders in the Swatch Gallery.

FURTHER READING: Formula Overview, which is a detailed review of the range as a whole.

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