Smudger brush

A smudger is the eye brush for undoing a line. Its head is short and densely packed, most often rounded or gently domed, on a long, slim handle, and because the short fibres barely bend, pressure goes straight into the roots of the lashes and the colour stays close to them. Worked back and forth over a pencil, gel or shadow line, it loosens the edge and spreads it by a millimetre or two, turning a drawn line into the soft, smoked band that reads as depth rather than as liner.

Its neighbours look similar and behave differently. A pencil brush is dense too, but cut to a point, for placing colour in a thin line or a corner; a flat definer presses a crisp line into the lashes and leaves it crisp; a fluffy blender is far looser, for softening shadow across the lid. The smudger belongs to the lash line: firm enough to push colour in, blunt enough to blur it.

Shape and firmness decide the effect. A small, rounded, firm head, like wet n wild’s Smoky Liner Brush or Crown’s sable smudger, keeps the smoke tight to the lashes; a larger dome, like Bdellium Tools’ 758, spreads it further and works in the crease as well. Some makers taper the dome, as Hourglass does on its Nº 13, so that the tip can draw along the lower lash line before the sides soften it. Press the head against the back of your hand: it should push colour rather than fan out, and spring back when you lift it.

Size the head to the eye. One about the width of a pencil’s eraser suits most lash lines; a narrower one follows the lower lashes without spreading colour onto the cheek, and a slightly wider one smokes out the upper lid in fewer passes.

Match the fibre to the product. Synthetic fibre is the usual choice, because pencil, gel and cream liners cling to hair and are hard to rinse out of it, and most smudgers in the carousel are synthetic. For powder shadow, hair works well: Hakuhodo makes its short, densely packed G5512 of horse hair, and Crown its C213 of a sable and goat blend. Softness matters most on the lower lash line, where the skin is thinnest; a brush that feels scratchy on the hand will feel worse there.

Work on liner that is still soft. Draw a pencil or gel line close to the lashes, then, before it sets, run the smudger along it in short back-and-forth strokes, keeping the brush flat against the lash line; the colour should move a little upward on the lid, or a little downward below the lower lashes, never outward in a broad sweep. For a deeper smoke, press a matching or darker powder shadow over the softened line with the same brush. It sets the pencil and stops it travelling.

Build from the outer corner. Most smoky eyes are deepest at the outer third and fade towards the inner corner, so begin the smudge where the line is thickest and let what is left on the brush soften the rest. Below the eye use even less colour: take the smudge only two-thirds of the way in, and keep it closest to the lashes, where it reads as definition rather than shadow.

It works without any liner, too. Pressed into a dark matte shadow and wiggled along the roots of the upper lashes, a smudger lays a soft band of powder that looks like shadowed lashes rather than a drawn line: the gentlest way to try a smoky eye.

A smudged line that looks grey or muddy usually holds too much product, or has been worked too long. Lift the excess with a clean brush rather than adding more colour, and wipe the smudger on a tissue between shades. Because it is used with creamy liners, a smudger clogs faster than most eye brushes: wash it after every few uses and dry it lying flat, so that the dense head keeps its shape.

The smudged line is older than the brush sold for it, and for a long time the tool was a finger. James Young’s Making Up, a stage manual published in New York in 1905, had actors draw black grease-paint with a paper stump or a lining stick under the eyes and on the lid above the lashes, and then “rub the finger over these lines until they are softened into a shadow”. “Hard, unblended lines are always injudicious,” he warned; after a line had been made around the eye, “the finger should be deftly rubbed over it to soften the effect”.^[1]

Seventy years later the same advice was being given at the dressing table. The Australian Women’s Weekly in 1976, as quoted by the historian James Bennett, told its readers: “Draw a pencil line close to the lashes all around the eye. Smudge this line, especially at the outer edges. It must not look like eyeliner.”^[2]

Neither source names a brush for the job, and nothing read for this page dates the first one sold for smudging. But the tool that does it now is recognisably the finger’s replacement: short, firm and blunt, small enough to follow the lash line, and clean enough to use again with the next colour.