Friday, July 11, 2014

Makeup: film noir + eyebrow masking

 Just a bit of fooling around with makeup and photoshop. I decided to do a film-noir look despite not having the hair for it. What makes it noir is the super thin eyebrows of course, the dark lips, and bringing in the eyeshadow into the bridge of your nose. I used brown eyeshadow (as supposed to) but i think black would have been better. More dramatic. Used white pencil on the bottom rim. Also, wrong decade and wrong style, but I decided to make a flapper crown out of a necklace chain and brooch I had.




I masked out half of my eyebrow using the old gluestick and concealer trick. If you aren't familiar with it, it's exactly as it sounds. You just rub a gluestick really hard onto your eyebrow and then put a really opaque concealer over it. Don't waste your money on pro eyebrow masking products, all professional makeup artists use a gluestick. The photoshopping done above makes it look like I've shaved that half completely off, but even without photoshopping, it still looks pretty good.

To illustrate the point, here's a picture of my work at a makeup class I took some time ago. This girl had thick eyebrows that weren't suitable for the cyber look I wanted. On the right (kind of cropped off) you can see the big load of FAIL that the pro eyebrow masking product was. I don't remember the brand, but it cost a small fortune. On the finished eye, you can see the gluestick masking with drugstore makeup on top. If I had better makeup, it would be hidden completely. But for a smoky club, it's good enough. Gluestick wins by a long shot


Do any of you mask your eyebrows or do you shave/pluck them off?

12 comments:

  1. Urgh, I've tried masking my eyebrows with glue so many times, but it never works. A member of staff at my local costume shop recommended dermawax as an alternative, but so many people swear by the glue stick method that I should really give it another chance.

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    1. a lot of people don't press hard enough. You have to really press hard and get a lot of the gluestick on your face and then smooth it. Another mistake is to start putting makeup on before the glue dries. Having thin eyebrows to begin with also makes it easier. If my makeup model had thin eyebrows like mine, it would have been a piece of cake.

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  2. I LOVE that look! You remind me of Jill Tracy!

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  3. Hahha, yeah, the gluestick - concealer combo is ridiculously effective for what it costs and it only takes a little time and practice to get it done. ^^ I like this look, it really suits you.

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  4. wow! I love this look. You look amazing. I'll have to try this trick

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    1. Yeah it's easy and you get to keep you r eyebrows

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  5. great glueing job!!! I actually didn´t know that you can rub a glue stick on your eyebrows instead of a wax-like professional paste. good to know, need to try this with Boris sometime.
    The 20s looks great on you!!! so dramatic and powerful :D

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    1. Yeah it's an old trick...not sure if it originated with the goths or with the drag queens. There's enough overlap

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  6. For my vulcan costumes I have both used gluesticks and waxed the ends of my eyebrows off. My eyebrows grow back very quickly and I wax most of them off and use an eyebrow pencil anyway. The old gluestick trick works really well if you don't want to remove your eyebrows, I was extremely skeptical about it before I tried it but it does really work.

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