Liquid eyeliner

Liquid eyeliner is the most exact line in makeup: an ink-like fluid of pigment and film-forming polymers, painted on with a fine brush. It dries in seconds to a flat or glossy film that does not smudge, which is both its strength and its difficulty. The line it draws is the line it keeps.

It comes in two forms. The classic dip liner keeps the ink in a small bottle and the brush in the cap; each dip reloads the brush, so the line is as wet and as black at the end of a stroke as at the start. The brush pen puts the ink in a barrel that feeds a fine brush tip, which is tidier to carry and quicker to use but lays down a slightly drier line. Both differ from a felt-tip liner, whose nib is a firm pad of fibres rather than separate hairs: easier to steady, less able to swell from hair-fine to bold. A gel from a pot stays workable for longer, and a pencil is soft and forgiving and never truly sharp. The flexing brush is why liquid liner is still the tool for the sharpest wings.

Look first at the brush. A long, thin brush draws the finest and most variable line and suits a practised hand; a shorter, firmer one wobbles less and is the easier first liquid liner. Angled brushes stamp the flick of a wing rather than draw it. Then the finish: matte liners dry flat and read as a soft black, while glossy or “vinyl” ones dry with a sheen that catches the light and shows every tremor. Finally the formula. Waterproof liners resist tears, sweat and humidity but need an oil-based or waterproof remover to come off; water-based ones last well on dry lids and wash away with an ordinary cleanser.

Black is the classic and the most forgiving, because a small wobble disappears into the lashes. Brown is softer in daylight but shows more of the hand. Coloured liners — navy, green, white — work best as a thin second line, or a flick above a black one.

Steady the hand before the eye: rest the elbow on a table and the little finger on the cheek, and look down into a mirror so the lid lies smooth without being pulled. With a dip liner, wipe one side of the brush on the neck of the bottle so it carries enough to flow but not to drip. Draw in short strokes rather than one sweep, from the inner corner outward, keeping the brush flat to the lash roots and overlapping each stroke with the last.

For a wing, place the flick first. With the eye open, draw a short line from the outer corner up towards the tail of the brow, then join its tip back to the lash line and fill the triangle. Taking both eyes to the halfway point before finishing either helps them match. Wait until the liner is fully dry before opening the eye wide, or it prints onto the crease, and correct mistakes with a pointed cotton bud dipped in remover rather than painting over them.

Liquid liner is the eye product most worth removing with care, because it is built to hold. Waterproof, film-forming liners come away best with an oil-based or two-phase remover on a cotton pad, pressed against the closed eye for a few seconds so the film loosens before you wipe; rubbing drags the lid and leaves grey traces in the lashes. Some Japanese and Korean liners are made the other way round, as films that resist oil and sweat but lift off in warm water. Their makers say so on the pack, and they are worth choosing if your eyes dislike oily removers. Replace a pen when its tip starts to skip or fray, and a dip liner whose ink has thickened: adding water to either only thins the line.

Liquid liner as a packaged product belongs to the late 1950s. Max Factor offered Hi-Fi Fluid Eye Liner, in thirteen shades, in 1958;^[1] Eylure in Britain began importing an American Liqua-Liner, sold with a Liqua-Liner Brush, in 1959;^[2] and in 1960 Gala of London added Liquid Line, which Cosmetics and Skin describes as a liquid eyeliner with a fine built-in brush attached to a long handle — the arrangement dip liners still use.^[3] Maybelline listed a Fluid Eye Liner among its new products in 1961, and by 1968 was selling a waterproof version.^[4]

The formulas changed faster than the bottle. Max Factor sold its Shiny Eye-Liner of 1967 on the promise that it “Flows on perfectly with its own sable brush – stays shiny even after it dries – peels off gently.”^[5] A patent filed for Pfizer the same year shows where the category was heading: liquid eyeliners “suitable for application by brush”, made from water-based dispersions of acrylic and vinyl polymers that dry to a film resistant to rubbing and moisture, yet come away “by cleansing cream or by soap and water”.^[6] Pigment held in a thin, flexible film is still the principle of liquid liner. It is why a good one outlasts almost any other eye makeup, and why it is the one that most needs removing with care.