Pencil brush

A pencil brush is the smallest shadow brush in the kit: a short, dense tuft of fibres cut to a point, like the tip of a sharpened pencil, on a long, slim handle. It does detail. The point draws shadow along the upper or lower lash line as a soft line, presses highlight into the inner corner, deepens the outer corner and, run over pencil liner, smokes it out without spreading it far. It is also the brush for eyeliner made of shadow: a dark matte shadow pressed along the upper lashes with the point gives a line softer than a pencil’s.

Its neighbours are close in size and different in shape. A smudger is short and dense too, but domed rather than pointed, and made to push colour into the lashes and blur it; an angled liner brush is flat and draws a sharp line; a crease brush is larger and softer, for the socket. The pencil brush sits between line and shadow, which is why it is the brush for a smoky lower lash line.

The point and the firmness decide what it can do. A fine, firm point draws a narrow line close to the lashes and puts highlight exactly into the inner corner; a softer, blunter tip diffuses more, and suits smoking out liner. Try the tip against the back of your hand: it should hold its point after it has been pressed, not splay into a fan, and it should feel soft enough to use along the lower lash line, where the skin is thin.

Synthetic fibre suits cream shadow, gel and pencil liner, which it can be worked over directly, and it washes clean quickly, which matters on a brush this dense. Some makers sell pencil brushes of hair for powder: Anastasia Beverly Hills describes the firm fibres of its A14 as natural, Hakuhodo makes its small G5515 of horse hair, and Crown Brush its bullet-shaped C513 of goat hair.

Size is the last choice. Most pencil brushes are a few millimetres across; a very small one, like Rae Morris’s #9.1, places colour in a thin line close to the lashes, while a slightly fuller point, like Sigma’s E30, blends it out a little further. Whatever the size, hold the handle close to the ferrule for work along the lashes: the shorter the lever, the steadier the line.

For a soft lower lash line, pick up a little matte shadow on the tip, tap off the excess and draw it along the lower lashes from the outer corner inward, stopping about two-thirds of the way; go back over it once with the side of the tip to soften it. On the upper lid, press the point into the roots of the lashes for depth without a visible line. For a smoky finish, draw pencil liner first and work it outward with the brush before it sets.

For the inner corner, press a small dot of pale shimmer or matte highlight into the corner with the point, then soften it outward once. For the outer corner, draw a short line of the deepest shade from the lash line up towards the end of the crease, and let the side of the point soften its upper edge.

The commonest mistake is too heavy a line under the eye. Take the colour only as far as it needs to go, keep it closest to the lashes, and check it in daylight: a lower line that looks soft under a bathroom light often reads much heavier outdoors.

Keep it clean between shades, because a dark colour left in a dense tip muddies the next one: wipe it on a towel as you work, and wash it after cream, gel or pencil. Reshape the point between your fingers while it is wet, and dry it lying flat.

Before it was a stick of graphite, a pencil was a brush. The word came into English in the fourteenth century for an artist’s small, fine brush, from the Latin penicillus, a painter’s brush, literally a “little tail”, and seems to have passed to the graphite writing stick only after sticks of graphite came into use in England in the sixteenth century.^[1] The older sense lasted a long time. The V&A still catalogues a drawing by Alexander Cozens, signed and dated 1763, as “drawn in bistre with a camel’s hair pencil”.^[2]

At the dressing table, that small brush was the tool for the finest work around the eye. The Ugly-Girl Papers, a book of toilet advice published in New York in 1874, told its readers that all preparations for darkening the brows and lashes “must be put on with a small hair-pencil. The ‘dirty-finger’ effect is not good.” It recommended a fine black line round the rim of the eyelid, which, “when properly done, should not be detected, and its effect in softening and enlarging the appearance of the eyes is well known by all amateur players”.^[3]

The pencil brush has come back to its name from the other side: a short, dense brush cut to the point of a sharpened pencil. Its work has not moved. It still lays colour along the rim of the lid, a little softer than a line and a little sharper than a shadow.