Hi Amiga, do you know how many women don’t use eyeliner because they suck at it.
I get these women in my makeup chair all the time.
Mamitas, you can have beautiful eyes too, you can even have a wing after reading my post. Stop missing out and let’s dive into it.
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Learn everything about Eyeliner in this post. Watch the video down below of Angie Di Battista who is applying a winged Eyeliner really well.
Jump ahead to:
Eyeliner
Not a lot of people don’t know what eyeliner is, even most men know what it is, maybe because it has been used as early as 10,000 BC.
Eyeliner was first used in Ancient India, Ancient Egypt, and Mesopotamia as a dark black line around the eyes.
There is something mesmerizing about the black against the white of the eyes, something our ancient ancestors noticed first.
A great feature of eyeliner, besides the black against the white, is the lifting effect it has on the eyes. This is why I think winged eyeliner is so popular.
Products
Nowadays like with all sorts of cosmetics, you can choose from a lot of different eyeliner products, let me sum up your choices:
- Pencil eyeliners,
- Liquid eyeliners,
- Gel eyeliners,
- Cake eyeliners.
For your own use, I would recommend a pencil or a product that comes with an applicator. Even for myself, it’s a hassle to apply a line with an eyeliner brush on my own eyes, I don’t even bother and use a kohl pencil.
On set the best eyeliner for me is cake-eyeliner, it is a very old-school product, it’s actually a pancake colored in black.
I tried all different eyeliners, highly recommended gel-liners, liquid-liners, but in the end, I went back to my little old black pancake from Kryolan, a theater brand.
It’s waterbased so if you need to correct a mistake all you need is a Q-tip with a little water, with a lot of liquid en gel liners.
This is not the case and you are in trouble when you make a mistake, on set you don’t have the time to take it all off and start over.
How to get the best Eyeliner
There is not a one-size-fits-all solution for the best eyeliner. Every eye is different and some eye shapes even look better without, although most people can pull off a line one way or another.
Realy small eyes, laying deep in the eye sockets could look better without eyeliner, even then, small dots in the lash line, creating a line can be pulled off for small eyes too.
An overall guideline is, big eyes with lots of “space” between lashline and eyebrows can have big eyeliners. Eyes with a lot of moving eyelid space can have a beautiful thick line.
The best way to boost your eyeliner skills, for yourself and as a makeup artist is to practice the heck out of it. I think eyeliner on yourself is more challenging than on someone else, having one eye closed seems to be the problem.
So on a rainy day grab your eyeliner products, makeup remover, a cup of tea, and get compy in front of the mirror. Make liners over and over again, you will get the hang of it eventually.
A good hack is to work with dots, to guide you in getting straight lines.
Winged Eyeliner
I am sorry to have to say, but winged eyeliner does not look good on everyone, unfortunately.
Hooded eyes, small eyes, eyes that lay deep in the sockets are not suitable for winged eyeliner, you need enough space for winged eyeliner. I am sorry hooded-eyed girls.
It is a very challenging technique, even for me. On set, I refuse to do a winged eyeliner if there is not enough time.
I had a dutch celebrity once who was in a great hurry, her taxi was already outside to take her to an outside location for an item in a live tv broadcasting and she really wanted a wing, and false lashes the whole shebang.
It is your right to refuse this, even though it cant be expected this goes well, this is exactly what IS expected and in the end, you are the one blamed.
You could say, I am willing to try but I can’t guarantee you it will be a good wing, I can guarantee a good regular eyeliner.
It actually was unprofessional of me to allow this, as a professional I had to inform her that it was impossible and I had to advise her to go for regular eyeliner.
Of course, I wanted to please her and wanted to give it my best, it turned out Ok, but Ok is not good enough for me, this is when I decided it is better to advise something else when there is pressure like a waiting taxi.
It could have gone really bad and I could have lost that particular tv-show over it, this is why I want to tell you about it. If something is impossible don’t let yourself be persuaded, you could lose work.
Challenging about a wing is to get it symmetrical, notice on photo’s how winged eyeliners are rarely photographed with the model looking straight in the lens, almost always the face is angled, or even just one eye on the photo.
You can get it straight, again if you have enough time and by using dots.
Dot where you want to have the end of the wing, look in the mirror standing straight behind your model, this way you can easily see if it is symmetrical. You can even dot all the way down to the lashline, then fill in the dots to get the line.
A little trick is to use a pencil or a cake eyeliner first, that you can adjust. If you’re happy with the shape you can apply liquid liner on top of it.
You can get a sharper line with liquid liner and it drys up totally fixed, then you’ll be sure it won’t go anywhere. Also, the black seems to be more intense.
I do like the stamps, they come in different sizes, the reusable ones are suited to use on other people.
These ones you can clean and use for the next person in your chair keeping your hygiene in order. For yourself, you can use the ones with the product coming out of the applicator.
Another tip I would like to give you is to fill in the upper waterline with black kohl to, go all the way up in between the lashes connecting with the eyeliner.
Make sure no skin color is peeping out, this finishes a good liner and makes your lashes look fuller too.
Have your model look down, away from the pencil it’s quite hard to do, the eyes are most likely to tear, but believe me, it is worth the effort. Just hold a tissue on watery eyes afterward.
Eyeliner can be so beautiful it can be used as is, without any eyeshadow look. Or with just one shade of eyeshadow, a shimmer for example.
It also often is the cherry on top for your great eyeshadow look. Mastering an eyeliner is a good idea, for both makeup artists or for yourself. Happy practicing.
Here is a great video by Angie Di Battista who is demonstrating a winged Eyeliner really well 6 min into the video.
Now you have learned about eyeliner if you have any questions leave me a comment I’ll be happy to help you get the best eyeliner. Cheers Mamitas.
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