In this article I will be talking (writing) about 7 ways of wrongly done brows - ergo brow "fails". I will try also to explain why are those specific brow styles simply WRONG.
To show you what I mean. I did my brows the "correct" way (in my opinion), then I took the photo and I changed the shapes, thickness and color using online photo editor. I hope you enjoy this article, and that you won't be offended if those mistakes are concearning you. In the end of this article I will mention mistakes I made in my brow routine. Here we go.
No brows means that all face, lip and eye make up is done but brows are not filled-in, not brushed or anything else what you might do to enhance them. You can see if you look to this picture that something is missing - without defined brows look doesn't look complete.
Most of the women don't have perfect brows - neither do I. The hair is not thick enough, there are some sparse areas, the hair doesn't grow much at the ends of the brows, so they look short. Therefore I have to fill them in, to give them shape and bit of a color, because they are too light and my hair is black. About the correct color of your brows I will talk later.
Only a few of the women who have very nice and full brows can afford to not doing anything with them. Yet I recommend to at least brush them through with clear brow gel or mascara, it gives them nice shape and it makes the hair going one direction.
This is one of the WORST things you can do - not fill-in your brows close enough which will give you terrible clown look. Please, don't do that.
I know, Joan Collins also had brows like that in Dynasty, but yeah, there are no 80's anymore, so such a thing is definitely not acceptable in 2014. Still, I've even seen make up artists with brows so far from each other, and I don't know what to really think about them then - poor judgement of what fits to them or simply not knowing much about beauty? It's just plain wrong.
There are theory's on where your brows should begin. Of course, you don't want to put them too close to each other because it will give you a angry look, and that's something you don't want.
I've seen one quite good "pencil technique" where you simply put a pencil in front of your nostril so it's straight and you just follow it's line and there should be your brow starting.
It might fit to most of the women, except those with close set eyes. Then their brows should start above their inner corners of their eyes.
Another technique would be to frown as much as you can, and where the brows start to wrinkle in the middle, there should be your brows starting. And that's also your natural brow line. It might be not 100% accurate but it might help you to figure out were should your brows start.
It says for itself - there type of brows will make you look like a clown. These brows are TOO THIN - it is just one line, same thick at the beginning as at the end and which is same bad or even worse - BAD ROUND SHAPE. I personally really hate round brows. It looks like you would put a glass on you eye and just traced its shape. That's not how brows should look like.
Too thin brows will make you look older - that's for sure. It was a big hit in some decades, I still remember the 90's when everybody just over plucked their eyebrows till they were super thin, even barely visible. Even worse, some women just plucked them totally gone and drew them on with a pencil - just like in 1930's and 40's. It really doesn't look natural nor nice. If you have only few hair on your brows or you don't have any hair on your brows at all, you might try some brow pomade (for example dip brow from Anastasia Beverly Hills or Make up Forever Aqua Brow, and from cheaper brands Sleek makes pretty good brow wax), with which you can draw brows on and blend it nicely (which you can't do with just brow pencil). Try to draw brows thicker in the inner corners, slimming down towards the arch and from arch till outer end slimming even more. The perfect brows should have a shape of wings of flying albatross or eagle. That brings me to issue nr. 2 which is shape. I have seen girls with brows plucked to round shape - it might be probably because rumour says that you should pluck your brows only from the bottom, never from the top. I personally find this a nonsense. You can pluck your brows from any direction you want to give them nice shape. If your brows are growing naturally high and you want to give them nice "flying wings" shape, you can easily pluck from top as well. Anything which avoids the shape like it's on this photo.
This is another example of not good shape. It is not natural, it gives a face not nice expression and the shape itself is just weird. It's definitely NOT flying wings shape.
Another thing which makes it wrong is that slimming of the brow is not smooth - brow is slimming towards the arch quite fluent but from the arch till the end is way too thin.
This shape is also more of a "straight" brow category, which I have nothing against - straight brows are awesome if they fit you but you can see on this picture that this shape really does not fit me.
Easiest for you to find out which brow shape fits you the most is make a photo of it and make a photo of another one - or draw your brows on with photo editor and then you can decide which brow shape will fit you and which won't. I recommend to simply stick with what you naturally have. If you have naturally straight brows, go for that shape but if your brows are naturally arched and defined, stay with that shape.
Here you can see right away what is wrong - the brows are too dark. Although they match my hair color but they don't match my skin color.
The key for finding out how dark the brows should be is to compare hair color and skin color and find a compromise.
If you have black hair and dark skin, black brows are okay. But if you have black hair and pale skin, you have to go for brown or dark brown - something which won't look too harsh on your skin.
In general - if you are brunette, your brows should be 2 or 3 shades lighter than your hair. If you have light hair, then they should be 1 or 2 shades darker than your hair. But again - any coloring you do on yourself has to be in harmony with your skin.
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| the pencil technique |
But again, don't draw your brows too long. It was very fashionable in 30's and 40's (or even earlier, I might be wrong), the era where women drew their brows on with a pencil and they drew them so long that it gave them super "bored" look - that's what they were actually going for.
Now, we the most certainly don't want to look bored. We want to look pretty, happy and healthy.
We have already talked about proper color of the brows. You could see how does it look like if we use too dark color for the brows. Here, you can see what happens if the brows are way too light. If I would have light brown or blond hair, it would be okay. It is also not such a big deal if you would look only to my face. But, if I would have my hair loose than you would see that it doesn't look good with my black hair. It would even look quite funny I think.
So, keep in mind that there really should be harmony between your brow color, your skin color and your hair color.
THE "PERFECT BROWS"
This is the perfect shape of brows for my complexion. The color is right, not too dark, not too light, thickness and length is ideal. Although, I had a much struggle with my brows in my pass.
When I was younger, I plucked my brows way too thin.I was filling them in with dark brown pencil. It wasn't bad but it definitely made me look older. Then I started to fill in my brows thicker but I was using very rich dark brown eyeshadow so it was looking very obvious and very harsh and the first thing what people would notice on my face were my brows.Then I discovered Catrice brow powder in perfect taupe brown colour, so it wasn't too warm or too fake looking, so it made my brow routine much easier and results much more natural. I also started to use small angle brush for application - which is much better than my previous flat brush which didn't make very thin lines.
Then I have purchased my first dip brow pomade from Anastasia Beverly Hills and it was something very new for me. With creamy gel you have to do your brows totally different than with powder, and you can not make any mistakes. After some time I learned how to do that properly, so now I don't have a problem with it anymore. Although, I still think I should switch the color from Chocolate to something darker like Dark brown or even Ebony.
Till some time ago I was making my brows way too close to each other (as you can see on my older posts). It made me look older and angry. I admit. Now I can see it much better because I know what I did wrong and now I can see the difference much better. I hope you can also learn a little bit more about mistakes you should not be making and I hope it makes you look better and also feel better. I know that beauty is just a matter of taste but I think that each of us should just try to look the best we can....
