When you catch an Instagram makeup look that stops you mid-scroll, it can keep you up at night until you know exactly how to pull it off at home. That’s just what happened when we came upon this extremely satisfying clip from Ana Del Prete (otherwise known by her handle, @nightmaring) of a swooping eye look that seems too effortless to be real. The close crop of her bare eyelids makes a perfect canvas for her tiny brush, with which she creates an elaborate black-to-white gradient on either side of her eye in just two swipes.
The crisp, upward flick of the brush on her outer corner is hypnotising enough to watch a hundred times before realising you’re running late for work, but it also begs the question: Is this look really as easy to do as it appears? According to Del Prete, all it takes the right brush, a couple of theatre-grade face paints, and careful hands. “The process of this look happed while staring at my face paint palette,” the Pittsburgh-based graduate student said. “I thought it would be cool to have some stark contrast and gradient work in a look that seemed very effortless and haphazard.”
Del Prete used just three items for the look: A watercolour paintbrush and two water-activated Mehron face paints, one white and one black. “I first fully saturated white paint on the brush and made it very wet,” she explains. “I then wet the black paint and very carefully applied it to just the tip of the brush.” That’s the easy part — that satisfying gradient swipe takes a little more strategy.
“I applied less pressure at the beginning of each stroke, then more in the middle, and lightly released end pressure at the end of the strokes,” Del Prete says. Still, it’s not the most difficult look in the world to achieve at home, and that was exactly her goal. If you’re a makeup newbie, learning this painting technique should take no time. Once you’ve perfected the stroke, load up even more colours on that brush and go wild — the possibilities are endless.