Make-up artist Kangai Mwiti, the face behind Bellesa Africa. Photo/COURTESY
By Mwikali Lati
Light. Colour. Shadow. This is how Kangai Mwiti
wants you to perceive make-up. In her six-minute videos on YouTube,
applying make-up has never been made so simple. Using models, she
display the products, tools needed and techniques of application.
Her light videos demonstrated how to apply
foundation and other skin preparation techniques, the colour show how to
play with bright and colourful make-up while the shadow show how to
create smoky, sexy looks.
It was natural for her to have a YouTube channel
after all she is a self-taught make-up artist who spent (and still
spends) countless hours on the site everyday watching and learning from
other make-up artists.
With more than 1.3 million views so far, Bellesa
Africa — bellesa means ‘beautiful’ in the Catalan language named for its
origins in north-eastern Spain — is her YouTube channel that made its
debut in mid-2012.
She posts about eight videos per month for her 37,000 subscribers.
“I wanted to do something more with make-up. I
wanted my impact to be greater than just doing make-up on a client who
would wash it off in the evening. For a long time I have been watching
YouTube videos and I thought that I could do it myself. I actually
wanted to begin in 2008 but I didn’t believe I was good enough yet. Four
years later, I realised I would never get good enough — I needed to
just start,” says Mwiti.
Her first make-up tutorial video was with a
project called Stingo, a group of creative friends of fashion and
photography. The model was Brenda Wairimu, an actress. This gave her the
motivation to continue doing more.
Mwiti’s love for make-up started while she was in
high school abroad, where she experimented on herself. Her mother
helped her put together her first professional make-up kit so it is no
wonder her biggest motivator is her family.
“I want to be the best so that I can make them proud.”
When she came back to Kenya in 2007, some of her friends encouraged her to get more involved in make-up.
Then early 2008, a friend approached her to do the
make-up in what was going to be a professional shoot for her album
cover. Since then she has never looked back and has travelled
internationally as an artist.
“The best shoots I have worked on are those where
there is no process, where I’m given the freedom to do whatever I want.
And I strive to fill my time with these sorts of shoots,” she says.
Currently, most of her work is in advertising,
bridal and Bellesa Africa. Her dream is to one day work on the set of an
epic film, free to be as creative as she wants to be.
To be good at her job, she has learnt to patiently understand the needs of a client.
“There is a misconception that bridal make-up should be demure, pretty and girlish,” she says.
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