This is our third installment of the Back to Basics series (Parts I and II). I’m building on each series so that you can see how to build on techniques and connect them. The photo collage above shows my nekkid eyes (left) and  naturally defined eyes on the right. I’ve done this side by side to show you the difference that just a few products can make to your overall appearance. We’ve already done eyebrows (check) and tightlining (check). Today we move on to #3 and #4.  I’m feeling reckless, so we’ll go backwards and start with #4: defining the lower lashline while keeping the eyes open.

 

1.  If you have chosen to do so, you should have already tightlined your upper lashline by this point.

2. To keep the eyes open, but defined, we will line the lower lashline in two parts. First start beneath the lashes. You can use a pencil, but a flat brush combined with cake liner (see here) will make it much easier to control. Press the brush up and into the lashes from underneath.  I used Illamasqua’s Cake Liner in “Mislead”

3. Using a white or very fair blue (if you are of fair skin), cream or vanilla-coloured (if you are medium to dark skin) eye pencil in your waterline. Make sure this pencil is either waterproof or very long-lasting.

4.  There you have it. Your eyes stand out without looking like you are wearing tons of eyeliner. Your eyes look larger because they light-coloured liner in the waterline visually extends the whites of your eyes.

In this posts’s very first photo, I listed #3 as “lifting the browbone”. The skin above my eyelids can appear droopy unless I am consciously putting tension in my face and raising my eyebrows. To visually “knock” back some of the heaviness of that skin, I use a darker brown eye shadow in the crease of my eye area. If you don’t have a well-defined socket, using an eye shadow colour 2 shades darker than your skin colour can help provide greater definition to the eye area.

1. Use the edge of an eye shadow applicator brush (not the sponge ones!) and softly run it along the area where you feel the eye socket. This is what is known as “the crease”.

2. Take a fluffy eye shadow brush and run it over your work just to soften the edges and diffuse the colour upward so that it gradually fades.

3. Look at your handy work. If you are satisfied, you’re done. If not, use the fluffy brush again to further soften. Or if not enough colour was deposited, go back to step 1.

4. You’re done! The eye shadow used in this tutorial is MAC’s “Cross Cultural” which is the same shade I use in my eye brows.