Mastering Winged Eye Liner & Spicing It Up

July 7, 2012

For this tutorial, you will need:

Black liner (preferably a gel liner)
Black Shadow
An angled brush

Winged eyeliner is definitely a challenging technique to master – but I’ve laid out the steps for you to make the process as easy as possible. You’ll need a black liner of your choice and a black shadow with an angled brush to create the look. I suggest using a gel liner (or any liner that comes in a pot form) to create a wing because it tends to be the easiest and most forgiving of the liners. If you’re really uncomfortable trying this out, start with using a black shadow on an angled brush and making small swipes along your lid. However, for the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to explain how to get the look using a gel liner.

To master winged eyeliner:

Start off by simply drawing a line from the end of your lid in the direction of the end of your brow. This gives you a good angle that you can be sure to achieve evenly on both sides. You can draw your line as far out as you want — the longer the line, the more dramatic your wing.
Close your eye and connect the end of the line to the base of your lid at a sharp angle. You will create a triangle shape from this step and will fill in the triangle later.
Line your top lid as you normally would from the inner corner to the outer. Connect this line to the triangle you previously created and then fill the triangle in. Don’t worry about filling in every single sparse area- we will correct this next.
Take a black shadow on an angled brush and fill in any sparse gaps in your liner and correct the shape of your wing. This makes it really easy to perfect your look and also sets your liner so it wears longer and does not smear. If you feel that your wing is still not perfect, try taking eye makeup remover on a q-tip and lightly dragging it along the edges to sharpen and perfect the shape.
Add a coat or two of mascara.
After you’ve mastered your winged liner, try spicing it up a little by adding a metallic color, such as silver, and applying it along your entire inner corner, under your lashline, all the way out following the base of your wing. The color should meet perfectly and work right underneath the black liner once you move past the lashline. This almost creates a “reverse” wing look and totally dramatizes your eyes for nighttime.

Have fun mastering and experimenting with your winged eyeliner!

- Dakota Doukas