AFAB vs AMAB makeup is a different art, so unfortunately it’s not surprising that your partner’s instincts on where to put highlights / shadows / volume was not to your liking.

I paint miniatures as a hobby, and I’ve come to realise that most of the principles transfer to makeup. First off, get a set of makeup brushes if you don’t already. Some things to note:

• know how to properly “load” your brush (after dipping my brush in liquid foundation, I work it in with a few swipes on my hand)
• thin coats of foundation are your friend, less is more
• add highlights to the center of your face (nose tip, forehead between your brows, eye bags, etc)
• if necessary, add shadows/contour to the outside of your face ( sides of chin/jaw, beneath cheek bone)
• eyeliner should be applied with your eyes open, unless you’re fixing a line toward the end
• having some q tips or an old brush to wipe off excess makeup is huge (eyeliner, shadow, lipstick, etc)

Most of the time, foundation looks bad if you can see it. If you are happy with your skin, don’t wear it. Make sure you are using a colour that matches your skin tone. Repeating myself because it’s important, less is more.

Echoing what others have said, HRT does help a lot with makeup looking more natural. I’d say my skills a year ago were about as good as they are now, but in that time HRT has helped what I do look more “correct” for lack of a better word. Most days I don’t feel the need to contour, just using concealer for highlights.

Getting a face of makeup and not liking the end result is horribly dysphoria inducing for me as well, which made practicing really difficult initially. I will say that it gets better with practice. Just like voice training, the light at the end of the tunnel is there. Good luck 🩷🫂

The first time I had a professional makeover done, it was by an artist who didn’t know what to do with trans folk. The end result was a face of makeup I took off as soon as I got home, because it almost looked like a caricature, with everything over exaggerated.

And that’s because HRT changes the way your face sits, and thus the way shadows fall, it changes the tone of your skin, it changes how hooded your eyelids are, and countless other little things that you don’t think about, but all add up.

But, there’s lots of tutorials out there on how to achieve the results you want with the face you have, rather than trying to apply the techniques that cis women use. And with time, the difference between those two will reduce as well.

The best bang for you buck makeup to feminize the face, at least for me, has been just eyeliner and mascara. Unfortunately, my eyesight is so bad, I have a focal range of ~70-150 mm and anything outside that is a blob, so doing my own eyeliner is nearly impossible until I can get some contacts 😠. I still tend to get called sir at stores/restaurants, but when I look in the mirror it’s a hell of a lot easier to see a girl even with just mascara.

My boss’ daughter is a movie MUA and when he mentioned that I had come out as trans, she got very excited to teach me how to do my makeup. The biggest things I took away were not to ignore colour correction, and eyeliner is pretty easy to do with dark eyeshadow and a fine brush if your eyes actually work lol 😋

Yeah, I pretty much gave up on makeup for the first six months or so, outside of a little mascara, for exactly the same reason.

Fortunately, estrogen is capable of wildly transforming your face, and makeup will suddenly start looking amazing once it starts accentuating feminine features!

Makeup can have an aging effect, especially I find foundation, powder, and eye shadow can make my skin look less soft and more textured.

Ideally you learn what needs improvement and how to do that with makeup, and you use as little as possible to achieve the effect. I don’t put on a glam look every time I walk out the door, but I ususally use a lash curler and mascara, I always use a cosmetic sunscreen, and I might cover up blemishes with concealer, and I ususally use a light pink tinted lip balm.

Unfortunately cis women can have fairly different approaches to makeup and fashion than trans women because what needs compensated and what looks good will be different.

So it’s great to get a lesson at a place like Sephora to get started, but I would be watching makeup tutorials on youtube, particularly looking for feminizing makeup tips by trans women (you don’t want drag queen makeup tutorials, you want something that targets looking natural and feminine at the end, drag is intentionally exaggerated and overdone).

Samantha Lux has a video on feminizing makeup that is decent.

Don’t be too disheartened, makeup really does sit differently on different people and there are specific techniques your wife probably hasn’t needed to be aware of. I (AFAB-woman) noticed when I put my makeup over a friend’s (AMAB-TBD) shaved face it looked surprisingly different and I had to make it darker in those areas to blend with the cheeks and forehead. That made a huge difference and that was without even looking up a tutorial. Also eye primer will do wonders for how that makeup sits. There’s a lot of frustrating trial and error that I’m sure dysphoria will not help, don’t lose hope immediately!