Let's Talk About...Eyebrows!!

I am one of those people that is in love with eyebrows, and I wanted to talk about how I work with them. I can recall my first crush as a pre-teen being Christian Slater, and my reason...because he had nice eyebrows! Ha! Funny to see how even as a kid sometimes you have little clues as to why you do what you do as an adult. Even though I'm a brow fanatic, I don't always go for that super-perfect-must-be-immaculately-symmetrical-and-penciled-in look, which I think makes me different from most brow obsessors like myself, so without further ado: let's talk about eyebrows.

EYEBROW "RULES"

I hate the term 'rules' for anything relating to makeup because they are so limiting, but I do use some guidelines about where brows should begin and end on the face when I'm shaping or filling them in. If you locate the center of someone's nostril and draw an invisible line straight up to the brow area, this is where the brow should begin. On certain faces, if this looks a tad too close together, I may start them a couple hairs-widths further apart than this, but this is rare. I have heard some people say that they think their eyebrow should begin in a direct line above the inner corner of the eye, but this to me leaves the brows sooo far apart. At any rate, I always end the tail of the brow in the same place, which is in a diagonal line from the outermost corner of the nostril to the outer corner of the eye. I wish I had a program on my computer to demonstrate this on Megan here, but I don't. Sorry. Hopefully you can see on Megan's left eyebrow the two points (beginning and end) placed as I have just described. 

PRODUCTS

To fill in brows and make them look their most natural, I often use a powder first, followed by a pencil if necessary. In my kit, I use Anastasia brow powder duos and her Brow Wiz pencil. I am telling you here and now, if you match one of the 3 Brow Wiz colors, they are the mac daddy. The Wiz has a super-fine tip that makes individual hair strokes easily, and has a great texture. Unfortunately it only comes in two Ash shades and a Brunette shade...I wish she would make it in golden and red tones! Anyways, if there are areas of a brow that are totally missing (in a lot of women it's the inner/beginning portion of the brow) I will first put down some powder as a 'background', and then use a pencil to create tiny hairs in the direction of the hair growth for the most realistic effect. Any time I apply product to the brows, I then comb them with a spoolie to soften and blend the products so they don't look too harsh or fake. Sometimes all a person needs is a little gel or wax to keep their brows in place, so I use MAC's brow gel and Smashbox brow wax. For very coarse brows, sometimes the wax is a better option than the gel because it is heavier and can really push them into place. Wax gives brows a nice sheen too, just like you would want on your head hair. 

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS...

What color I use on the brow varies, based on hair and skin tone, the rest of the makeup used, how dense or spare the brows are, etc.  so this is not something I can really come up with a guideline for. Instead I just judge based on each application I do. For instance, check out Beyonce's dark eye makeup and brows to the right, versus her lighter look below. The darker brow helps balance the heavier eye makeup and deeper tones in her hair, whereas her look below is much softer and would look out of place with darker brows. It all depends on the statement being made. 

I generally shape someone's brows according to their natural brow bone structure, but here are a few ideas I have...round  

faces should avoid rounded brows and go for a little arch to give the face structure, square faces should have a less arched brow to soften the angles of the face, long faces look nice with straighter brows to give them some width, etc. etc. Sometimes various ethnicities have a particular brow structure unique to them, so I will often try to follow that rather than face shape.

 The modern trend for brows is for them to be full but groomed, meaning, brows should be tweezed or waxed to remove hairs that fall outside of the brow shape, but should not be made thinner. Thinning brows is very 90's and pretty out of vogue these days. Over-tweezed brows throw the face proportions out of balance and sometimes don't grow back in after being removed so many times, so I'm not a big fan.

The last thing I will say is that eyebrows are normally 'sisters  not twins'. Muscle control varies on each side of the face so sometimes one eyebrow is higher, or more arched, or whatever. If brows are uneven, I do my best to make them more even, but I don't freak out if they aren't perfectly symmetrical. In fact, sometimes if brows are too perfect then they don't look as natural, so it depends on the look I'm going for. I wish more people would adopt this attitude because when I talk to women about their brows, they often are so critical and expect them to be perfectly identical, and this leads them to be frustrated and insecure. It's alright to accept some differences and still feel good about yourself!! 

If you have any questions please let me know. Thanks for reading this post! Subscribe by email if you'd like to receive more.