Unlock your bold side: Step-by-step guide to effortless colour blocking eyes
Instagramable fashion is rarely, if ever, an everyday look. With colour blocking taking over the runway and street fashion, style savants everywhere are experimenting with chunky eye makeup as a playful accompaniment to their outfits.
Despite it looking like a mammoth task that would take hours and hours of steady, meticulous labour, colour blocking on the eye is actually, surprisingly easy. Rather than using the natural shape of the eye as inspiration, the technique provides a fresh canvas for the eye, allowing the wearer to create new and unique dimensions. It eliminates the need to blend and shade and does away with soft, earthy hues, playing around instead, with complementing or contrasting primary or secondary colours, stark lines, and geometric shapes.
For those who are shaky, the process laid out by Instagram makeup artist Celine Bernaerts looks fairly simple. Using a steady hand, she draws out the outline of a rectangle. (There is no stopping you from chasing your imagination if you have something against rectangles, though!) She proceeds to fill out her shape in an electric shade of blue and tops it off with some glitter for extra dazzle.
As another one of Bernaerts's video tutorials will tell you, a more subtle and understated cousin of the geometric eye demonstrated above — called a geometric cat eye — also exists. This simply substitutes the pointy edge of the cat eye for squared corners, using vibrant and edgy colours.
Other makeup artists have experimented with the inner corners of their eyes, using sunshine yellow or orange to make it pop, simply drawn a thin, neon line parting the lid in half and leaving the top and bottom portion bare, or gone for a thick wing in dull, glimmery black.
If none of the above appeal to your minimalist soul, simply pair two or more bright colours and fill in your top and lower lids the way you normally would, but without blending.
For those who wish to jump on this snazzy, crazy, bold bandwagon, Maybelline's Lemonade Craze Palette is a good set to begin with, including colours such as strawberry pink and zesty yellow. Offering similar eclectic colours is Huda Beauty's Obsession set coming in two delicious combos: purple with neon orange and blue with yellow. The Shadow Blocks Eyeshadow Palette by Maybelline is equally good in frosty purple, peachy pink, and rose gold shades as is the L.A. COLORS Color Block Eyeshadow Palette, Glam, in bronze, copper and sable tones.
Model: Mysha
Styling: Sonia Yeasmin Isha
Makeup: Sumon Rahat