Following my #NoMakeUp Challenge, it’s been 22 days without an ounce of makeup, no powder and accordingly, no eyebrows. So I think it’s fitting to tell you a bit about me and make up.

As a child, I loved to draw and paint. Before I could write, I could draw, connecting all the little bumps on our bedroom wall with pencil lines.  It came naturally to me.

Dad often bought us colouring and dot-to-dot books, in which we would trace lines to and through numbered dots, at the end of which revealed a drawing of something fascinating.

Then I grew to sketching and colouring the cartoon characters just by sitting and watching them on NTA and Cartoon Network. To this day, plain white paper and a good sharp pencil makes me exceedingly happy.

In primary school, I would be handed a box of coloured chalk and asked to draw a life-size Santa on one half of the blackboard for the Christmas holiday, and it was my utmost pleasure.

I would stand for what felt like hours on my chair and stretch to reach the top of the board for Santa’s head. When I was done, exhausted, I’d step back, appraise my work; comparing it to the magazine cover I’d been handed and feel a sense of fulfillment from its similarity, especially when it was still on the board in January.

So, you can understand how staring in the mirror, meticulously drawing on my eyebrows and blending in all six colours of my eye-shadow are exceedingly satisfying for me.

I discovered makeup at 20, long after I had stopped drawing and painting. It was about the time when MaryKay launched in the Nigerian market. I remember trying on the colours, and settling for Bronze 308 when it blended in perfectly with my skin tone.

In that moment, my love for drawing and painting was reignited and every day since then, my washed face has been my preferred colouring book.

Now, you should know that I’m not big on colouring other people’s faces. Much like the blackboard I drew on once a year, the unfamiliar contours are a challenge. I worry that they might not like my work, that I may not like my work on them either, and I can’t simply wash it away. But with my face, I’m assured of perfection…most of the time.

Despite my reservations, I take pride in doing my friends make-up occasionally, and smacking their foreheads with my makeup brush when they won’t sit still or shut up. It is quite enjoyable, the smacking I mean. I take “before” and “after” pictures and still feel that sense of pride when they look stunning and are happy.

In a nutshell, a colouring book is little more than black lines on white paper, bursting with potential. These lines and spaces come alive when you fill them with colour. Lines make a drawing, but with paint, it becomes a picture telling a vivid story. This is how I see a bare face and make-up, beautiful but ordinary and waiting to blossom at the touch of a brush, with a little bit of colour on all the right places.

Photo Source: Dump.fm