Colored Eyeliner

March 7, 2009

So you like blue, green, and purple? Me too.

Taking yourself seriously is never recommended but, in some situations, you do need to be taken seriously by others. Colored eyeliner is not the way to get there.

While exuberant colors on your face might still not be the best choice for a professional setting, color is too much fun to reject altogether.

There are 2 ways to add blue/green/purple to makeup that I think look great. Obviously, these are eye makeup – in fact, eyeliner - techniques. They’re both subtle enough to still be tasteful. They’re fast. They’re easy to get right and surprisingly hard to get wrong, because the color is used on such a small area.

Colored eyeliner.

This is not a dark eyeliner look or a smoky eye look. The color has to be softer to work as a subtle accent in its own right. Someone looking at you should not be able to see the color right away. Too dark comes on too strong and winds up looking hard with the first technique and fierce with the second one.

Naturally, women with stronger, more intense coloring will choose deeper colors. Women with very soft coloring, like Michelle Pfeifer, would pick something that would be too washed-out on Eva Longoria.

InStyle shows a photo gallery of colored liner looks. I’m not a fan of most of these looks. The color is too obvious. Kate Hudson’s turquoise and Blake Lively’s gold – they’re just too much. Rebecca Gayheart shows a good example of how to use a light to medium color in a more subtle way – there’s a light color lining the inner rim of the lower lid (that’s called the ‘waterline’).

Be careful not to choose a color with a lot of red pigment or you may end up looking as if you’ve been crying. Those pigments can often be very irritating to the eyes as well. Blue-purple, medium green, violet – this is the time to play (and not spend too much money) so try out different colors. Rimmel’s Exaggerate Full Color Eye Definer in Aubergine is a nice blue-purple. The same pencil in Pine is a good medium green. ( Rimmel does conduct animal testing. These were bought at a time when I was less judicious.)

To help choose a color that will be great on YOU, consult the color palette for your season. (Visit Pretty Your World to learn a lot more about Color Analysis. Once you get this figured out once, you’ll never again make a color mistake.). See a color that you’d like to try as an eyeliner? Teal on an Autumn? Soft plum on a Summer. Sounds gorgeous to me. Use it in one of these two ways :

First eyeliner technique

This method begins with the colored liner and applies it in the usual way, as a line around the eye, top and bottom, inside corner (where the lashes begin) to outside corner. The line is barely noticeable on the inside corner and becomes progressively thicker as you go outwards, but still never very wide. No need to get precise or do any smudging here The softer color intensity is very forgiving and we’ll be covering it with an eyeshadow anyhow.

After applying the liner, apply your usual medium matte neutral eyeshadow. The color might be camel, taupe, or grey depending on your coloring and the shape of your eye socket. Put a thin wash all over the lid , right over the eyeliner. Go into the crease, and just above the crease, but not to the browbone. This is simply a thin layer on a bigger surface area to tone down any cartoon effect of the color in the liner.

Here’s another gallery of colored eyeliner looks at ElleGirl magazine - and none of them are much use in the real world, except the third, which is a good illustration of this technique.

With what’s left on the brush, go over the line of eyeliner that’s under the lower lashes, or maybe just below it. Don’t go over the liner with an eyeshadow of the same color or the effect will be too vibrant. We want to hint, nothing more.

Finally, apply another, very light, layer of the liner over the first, just to give the color a little more depth.

If you wish to apply a light matte shadow right under the eyebrow, that’s fine. I usually just use a little concealer there to get the lift effect without needing an extra eyeshadow, because it becomes too complicated of an eye design. Personally, I think it looks best with less mascara than you might normally wear.

It ‘s got to look like it might have just happened on its own, like a blurry smudged impression of something more. It’s the power of suggestion.

Second eyeliner technique

You can see this illustrated in the eye at the top. Here it is again. There is no other makeup here, just the eyeliner. Which eye pops out at you more?

Colored eyeliner on 1 eye only.

This takes a little practice but no time. Your eye color will stand out nicely. The color is on too small an area for anyone to really perceive that it’s there as long as you choose a color that’s neither too dark or too glittery. Once again, the color of the liner is an accent to emphasize your eyes.

Here, we’re placing the liner along the inside rim of the upper eyelid. That’s it. Just draw a line there tracing the pencil along the underside edge of the lashes.

Colored eyeliner on inner rim of upper lid.

The color above is Rimmel Aubergine.

A deep blue cleans up the white of the eye and looks nice on dark brown eyes in this second technique. It’s this (deepblueliner) .

Deep blue eyeliner.

It’s not this

Turquoise eyeliner.

or this

Powder blue eyeliner.

, and certainly not the metallic versions of these which is worse. Why are these colors such staples, especially on women with blue eyes? I think it’s a leftover from younger days. And yet, blue eyes are the easiest of all to accentuate with liner. Brown and gray (especially warm brown) look better on blue eyes than any other eye color.

On the rest of the eye, use your neutrals, though I think the liner’s effect is more noticeable if you use neutrals in lighter colors than usual – so camel instead of a deeper brown if you’re warm, or mushroom instead of taupe if you’re cooler.

These are not serious looks, so be playful. Try out various colors. As soon as you put green on your face, you’ve relinquished your gravity (in more ways than one).

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Color Analysis, Makeup