“Oooh, your eyes look lovely! I love what you’ve done with the eye shadows. I would just end up looking like I have a black eye” (implied ( ). Too many times to count, I hear women say that they don’t have a clue about eye shadow. Worse is that some of these same women seem afraid of lookin’ a damn fool by applying it the wrong way. I can understand a bit of trepidation, especially when I regularly see women who can’t even wear one eye shadow colour properly. But trust me, there is a quick and easy way to get those nice contoured eyes you’ve been lusting after.

A technique that Illamasqua has pioneered is skin sketching. Inspired by Greta Garbo’s contoured eyes of the 1940s, it allows you to use soft pencils and a single brush to quickly and easily define your eyes. Today I’m focused on neutral tones since those are the most often worn ones. Here’s what you will need:

• eye shadow primer to prevent creasing (optional if you don’t have oily lids)
• 3 soft neutral coloured pencils appropriate for your skin colour (light, medium, dark)
• 1 narrow, fluffy blending brush OR a dense shader brush OR a couple of cotton buds
• translucent powder
• shimmery eye shadow colour for the lid (optional)

 

Instructions:

 

1) Using the light coloured pencil, shade in underneath the brow bone and the eyelid. Be careful not to take the colour up to the socket area.

2) Using the medium coloured pencil (just barely darker than your skin colour), shade in just under where you put the lighter colour. This should be just underneath the brow bone. You should still be able to feel the ridge of the brown bone.

3) Using the darker pencil, shade in between the medium colour and the lid colour. This should be where the eye socket is, also known as the crease.

4) Take your brush (I used a dense shader brush used to pack on eyes shadow) and blend the colours from light to dark. Start with just underneath the brow bone, followed by the lid, then back to the medium colour, and finally the darkest colour in the crease.

If you have an extra 2 minutes, you can apply and blend the pencil colours one by one. You will get a neater, more precise look. Finish the look off with setting powder or use a shimmery pigment or shadow on your lid to enhance the look. See below:

You can’t tell that this was done by pencil, can you?