The Beauty Routine Makeup Artist Dillon Peña Has Been Using As Of Late

If you're looking for a dewy, "no-makeup" makeup look, celebrity makeup artist Dillon Peña is your guy. Peña always had a skin-first mentality when it comes to makeup, way before the "clean girl" aesthetic swept the masses—he worked directly under Bobbi Brown, after all, who's arguably the queen of a natural flush. But Peña also knows how to have fun with glitz and glam: "I had grown up painting," he tells me over the phone. "I fell in love with makeup because I realized it was a way that I could always paint." He always keeps a pot of iridescent glitter in his kit, just in case a client wants to play.

Still, fresh, natural makeup is his M.O. A healthy, hydrated canvas is the bedrock of any radiant makeup look, which is exactly why he started his own clean skin care line, Leland Francis (the name pays homage to his great grandfather, who established the Western Oklahoma farm where Peña was raised). Each nourishing formula serves as the perfect prep step for a stunning face beat—would you expect anything less from a seasoned makeup pro? 

"I have used face oils in my routine for probably 15 years. That's just something I consistently have done. I grew up with really bad acne, and I'll never forget being in a Bobbi Brown training when I first started, and this girl was like, 'I had really bad acne, so I started using face oil every day.' She showed before and after photos, and her skin had completely healed.

"At that point, I had always been very afraid of face oils, and I was like, 'Well, maybe I should try this, too, because I had severely acne-prone skin.' So I just started using a little bit of face oil, and what I found out is that it kind of did heal my skin because I was using so much to dry out my skin to keep it from breaking out. From then on, I just became a lover of face oils.

"Because I was always acne-prone, I was always afraid of a super-rich cream. [But] I actually really love really thick balm or super, super-rich cream that just feels luxurious and gives comfort to the skin. I was always afraid of that, just coming from having [acne-prone] skin growing up.

"I'm super sensitive, so I can break out in hives at the drop of a hat. So I always look for something that's going to be a little bit more on the natural side, but I do like the La Mer [Crème de la Mer]. If I'm super, super dry, the Augustinus Bader Rich Cream is good, but I like something that has a little bit more thickness to it.

"What I think is underrated is a face roller. I love the ReFa facial massagers. I actually take that with me every time I travel because I feel like vacation is always one of those times where you drink a little bit more, and so you get a little bit puffy. So I always take that with me if I'm traveling.

"I will tell you the one thing that I've actually become obsessed with is this thing called a stem cell facial. Basically, it is a microneedling facial, and they take exosomes, which are basically like stem cells, and they do a pass of hyaluronic acid into the skin with the microneedling.

"And then once they see a little bit of the blood through the microneedling, they use exosomes on your face. It's basically stem cells that help revitalize and heal your face. There's no downtime to it, which is amazing. The exosomes actually heal your face, and you can go to work the next day.

"I love NIVEA cream in a pinch. I know that I can always buy that at a drugstore if I forget my moisturizer when I'm packing. And I can't tell you how many times that I've done that. I know that I can always go buy a Nivea cream, and it'll work.

"What's great about it is you can manipulate it to be as thin or as heavy as you want it to be. You just use a little bit less of it, and you heat it up more, so that way you can just press it into your skin. The more you heat it up, the more malleable it becomes.

"In my backpack that I travel with, I always have a lip and eye balm, because I can manipulate that to however I need it. If I feel like my lips are super dry, I can apply that; I can use it on my cuticles; I can even heat it up and press it onto my cheeks if I feel like I need a little life in my skin.

"Whenever I think of my career, I think that people identify me with a more clean and natural look. That's definitely what I get booked on. I always carry glitters in my kit, and I'm like, 'Oh, I never get to do it.' But it's because I am booked for that super-clean, no-makeup makeup look."