Stippling brush

A stippling brush holds two kinds of fibre in one head: a short, dense layer at the base and a sparser layer of longer fibres standing above it, often in a lighter colour, so that many stipplers look two-toned. The long fibres touch the skin first while the short ones hold the product back, so each tap leaves only a little, in tiny dots that blur together. The result is a sheer, even layer with a soft finish, the effect makers call airbrushed.

It is used by tapping, not wiping, which is what stippling means. A flat-top buffing brush, dense all the way through, gives fuller coverage; a flat paddle paints; a damp sponge presses and bounces much as a stippler does. The stippler suits thin liquids, skin tints, cream blush and highlighter, and anyone who wants foundation to look like less than it is.

Judge a stippler by the balance between its layers. Where the long fibres stand well clear of the short ones, the brush is springy and deposits very little: good for sheer layers, blush and highlighter. Where the layers are closer, it behaves more like a flat-top and gives more coverage. Hakuhodo describes its own in just these terms: synthetic fibres that “extend further than the goat hair” give the brush its spring and let it pick up “just the right amount of product”.^[1]

Size matters as much. A large, full-face stippler, such as Real Techniques’ Extra Big, covers a face quickly with a skin tint or BB cream; a small one places cream blush, concealer or highlight exactly. Most of the stipplers in the carousel are wholly synthetic, which suits liquids. The older mix, goat hair under synthetic tips, adds the grip that natural hair has for powder.^[2] MAC’s large duo-fibre face brush, the 187, no longer appears in its US catalogue; the MAC here is its smaller duo-fibre blush brush.

Use less product than you think. Put a little foundation on the back of your hand, touch only the tips of the brush to it, and tap them onto the face, holding the brush upright and bouncing it lightly so that the long fibres flex and the short ones barely touch. Work outward from the centre of the face and build in layers, letting each settle for a moment. Do not drag or scrub, or the long fibres splay and the dots become streaks; a light circle at the end, with almost no pressure, softens any edges.

Cream blush and highlighter work the same way: tap the colour on where you want it, then bounce outward to soften the edge. Keep the head in shape. Wash a stippler after each use with liquids, from the base outward, squeeze it gently, reshape the long fibres with your fingers and dry it lying flat. One whose outer fibres have splayed into a fan deposits unevenly and is due for replacement.

A stippler and a damp sponge do nearly the same job: both press product on in dots and blur it into the skin. The differences are practical. A sponge has to be damp, so it thins the product a little and holds some of it back; a stippler is used dry and puts down more of what it picks up, so it gives a little more coverage from the same drop of foundation. A sponge presses into the corners of the nose and under the eyes more easily; a stippler covers the broad planes of the cheeks and forehead faster. Many people use both, the brush for the face and the sponge for the corners, pressing everything together at the end.

Stippling is older than any brush made for the face. The Getty’s art vocabulary defines it simply as marking a surface with small flicks or dots,^[3] and printmakers built whole tones out of it: stipple engraving, in the same vocabulary’s words, “achieves tonal areas by directly engraving short flicks or dots”.^[4] The V&A holds one such print, a stipple engraving by Victor Marie Picot published on 21 February 1776.^[5]

The stippling brush itself came from decorating. In a patent application filed in 1921, the New York inventor Charles G. Hampson described the stippling brushes then in use, of “long stiff bristles set into a suitable back”, struck again and again against a coated wall “to give the well known mottled or stippling effect”, and listed their faults: the bristles bunched together, clogged when the colour was a little too thick, and wore down faster at the edges than in the middle. His answer, patented in 1923, was to stipple with a porous rubber sponge instead.^[6] The brush did not disappear: a British patent published in 1957 still refines the decorator’s stippling brush, building it from separate units of bristles set in rubber on metal plates, which could be joined on one backing into a larger brush.^[7] The same choice, brush or sponge, faces anyone putting on foundation today.

When the two-layered stippling brush reached the makeup counter is not well recorded: the houses that sell it describe the design, long fibres over short, but not where it came from. What it keeps from those walls is the method, a finish built out of dots too small to see.