Apparently I do an okay winged eye. I attribute it to starting when I was 16 and the only liquid eyeliner I could find had applicators that were thick foam cones. Learning to wrangle those awful things made thin pen lines the easiest things in the world. Which I need to check my privilege about apparently. So to make amends, here’s a tutorial requested by @KateMontgom who is a legit beauty editor. Unlike me and my scribbles below.

Step 1

First I do pencil eyeliner under my lash line on my eyelid.

Step 2

Then I use the thinnest liquid liner I can (Maybelline precise line), keep my eyes open, and start in the center of my eyelid as close as I can get to the lash line. I find it helps to start in the center as that’s often the widest point so you have wiggle room if you over/under-estimate the width of the liner or wobble a bit.

Step 3

Then I taper the liner super thinly downwards towards the start of the eyelid as far as I feel like going that day (I go all the way to the start of the eye for night makeup, and only partially for daytime). This isn’t a smooth motion in one direction as I find that really hard to get right, so I will sometimes swap between going down towards the start of my eye from the middle, and coming back from the other direction to meet the center. I try to taper the line slowly and subtly into the lash line so it doesn’t have an obvious start point.

Step 4

That gives me a really thin line at the start of my lash line graduating to a slightly thicker line at the center of my lash line where I started. Back at the center I taper the line outwards towards the end of my lash line following the natural curve of my eyelid, stopping when there’s about a quarter of my eyelid left.

Step 5

Then I half close my eye and go off course following the trajectory I’ve started outwards, rather than following the natural curve of my lash line. I don’t go too far out for day makeup, and slightly further out for night makeup.

Step 6

This gives me a silly looking line poking out from the side of my eye.

Step 7

I then draw a line from the far end of the wing down to the end of my natural lash line.

Step 8

To finish, I colour in the inside of the triangle left by joining the two lines. Then I go over the line I’ve drawn from start to finish, evening out the line along the way if I need to. Sometimes I join the wing tip with the corner of my bottom eyelid and go over the triangle to really make it stand out. Then I’m done! (I put on mascara now).

Anyway this is me with the remnants of my daytime liquid eyeliner on. (Don’t worry, I won’t quit my day job and do beauty tutorials any time soon).