Brow pen

A brow pen works like a fine-tipped marker. A reservoir of thin, liquid colour feeds a tip of felt, fibre or fine bristles, which draws a line about as thin as a brow hair; split tips, with two, three or more prongs, draw several at once. The colour dries in seconds and, being so thin, tints the skin rather than sitting on it, so a stroke reads as the shadow of a hair rather than as makeup. Most are sold as waterproof and long-wearing.

Its nearest neighbour is the micro pencil, which draws a similar stroke but lays waxy colour on the skin that can still be softened afterwards; a pen’s stroke cannot be blended once it has dried. It does nothing for the hairs themselves, adding no colour, texture or hold, so it pairs well with a tinted or clear brow gel. It is also a close relation of the eyeliner pen, and like a liner pen it rewards a steady hand and punishes a hurried one.

A single fine tip, whether felt or bristle, gives the most control: every stroke goes where you put it, and a light touch draws a finer line than a heavy one. It is slow for filling a large gap. Split tips fill faster, drawing two, three or more strokes in one movement, but the strokes come out evenly spaced and parallel, and a brow made only of them can look stamped. The usual answer is to use a split tip for the body of the brow and single strokes, or a micro pencil, for the front and the tail, where real hairs are sparse and irregular.

The colour differs too. Some pens are sheer and meant to be built up; others are strong from the first stroke. Choose a shade lighter and cooler than your brow hair, since strokes darken where they overlap, and remember that a pen is less forgiving than a pencil: a misplaced stroke has to be lifted with makeup remover, not brushed away.

Work on clean skin. Moisturiser and oil under the brow stop the colour gripping and make strokes skip or smudge, so blot the area first and keep creams away from it. Shake the pen if its maker says to, test the flow on the back of your hand, and hold it at a low angle to the skin, as you would a fountain pen.

Draw with quick, light flicks in the direction of the hair, lifting at the end of each stroke so that it tapers. Start in the middle of the brow, where the gaps usually are; angle strokes upward at the front and flatten them towards the tail, and vary their length. Let one layer dry before adding another rather than going over wet strokes. Once dry, brush through with a spoolie and set the hairs with gel if you like. Cap the pen at once, since the tip dries out in the air.

Because the colour sets as a tint, a stroke in the wrong place has to be lifted rather than blended. A cotton bud dipped in micellar water or an oil-based remover takes it off best before it has fully set, and a touch of concealer covers any shadow that remains. At night, use an oil-based cleanser rather than soap alone: long-wear pens are made to resist water, and scrubbing only irritates the skin under the brow.

The brow pen’s engineering is easiest to follow through patents. In 2002 L’Oréal applied for a patent on an applicator whose tip divides into two fibre prongs, able to draw “two strokes that are distinct and substantially parallel”: it was meant then for lining the eyelids.^[1] When the company filed for an eyebrow pen in 2015, granted in 2020, it described earlier applicators that drew “small lines, in order to mimic eyebrow hairs” but had to be dipped in the product first, and a felt-tipped pen that avoided the dipping. Its own pen angled a porous tip, because one set straight along the pen was, it said, “unsuitable to a quick and easy make-up of the eyebrows”.^[2]

The fashion the pen now serves owes something to the tattooist’s chair. In January 2016 a Canadian cosmetic tattooist told CBC News that brow “feathering”, or micropigmentation, a practice like tattooing that lasts one to three years, “was popular in Korea before” and had “really exploded” where she worked only in the past year; one of her clients wanted to stop spending time each morning drawing her brows on with a pencil.^[3] In the United States pigment set into the skin is treated as a tattoo: the FDA regards the inks used for permanent makeup as cosmetics, has approved no colour additive for injection into the skin, and leaves the practice of tattooing to local jurisdictions.^[4]

No source we have found names the first split-tip brow pen, and makers’ claims to it are marketing. What the shelves show is that the two have met. Some of the pens below are sold on their likeness to microblading: a look that takes a salon appointment and lasts for years, offered instead as a pen that lasts a day.