I know there are currently tons of eyeshadow tutorials for Asian eyes, but the problem with those is that they often assume that there is only one generic Asian eye shape. However, Asian eyes come in various shapes and sizes too, just like Caucasian eyes, so to give a generic "eyeshadow tutorial for Asian eyes" is a bit misleading, as it implies all Asians have the same eye size and shape. Thus, any generic Asian eyeshadow tutorial is bound to help some girls, but not others. What we need is a series of eyeshadows geared to different types of Asian shapes, instead of just one generic tutorial. (For more information, check out the first half of THIS POST - it has more information on the misconception that all Asians have the same eye shape.)
Thus, in this series of posts, I look at a different type of Asian eye each time, and suggest eyeshadow placement for that specific eye shape. Hopefully this will help some girls out there!
Today, we are looking at Blair's eye. I really need to apologize for the pictures, they aren't great but they were the best I could get. As you can see, Blair's eye is very different from Wendy's eye (which we looked at last time HERE). Here are the main features of Blair's eye:
1. Blair's eyes are actually very round (by Asian standards, anyway). She also has pretty large eyes. I know you can't see this because it's not a full-face shot, but her eyes are her most prominent feature because they're big and lovely.
2. Her eyes are very prominent - you can see the entire eyeball's outline in the eye socket (this is particularly obvious if you compare it with Wendy's eye).
3. Like Wendy in the previous post, she also has hooded eyes.
I know most people would think that having prominent eyes and hooded eyes sounds like a contradiction, because they are thinking about the typical Caucasian prominent eye, which rarely comes with a hooded lid. However as you can see in the above photos, although her eyeball is pretty prominent, she also has a hooded eyelid, because when she opens her eyes, you can see that half of her lid space is covered by the crease area, and the crease kind of folds over onto her lid.
Another thing I'd like to point out is that although Blair's eyes are prominent and large, they don't resemble the typical Caucasian prominent eye shape. This is why it is difficult to transpose techniques for prominent Caucasian eyes onto Blair's eyes, although both eye shapes can be classified as "prominent". Blair's eyes are prominent - as you can see the eyeball kind of "sticks out" and is not sunk into the eye socket, and if you looked at a full-face photo of her (unfortunately this isn't available), this would be very obvious because her large eyes are her dominant facial feature. However unlike prominent Caucasian eyes, which in general tend to be really contoured and defined, Blair's eyes don't have the sharp, defined contours often associated with prominent Caucasian eyes, although they are the dominant feature of her face. Thus, because the Asian prominent eye is sometimes slightly different from the typical Caucasian prominent eye contour-wise, it requires different treatment when it comes to eyeshadow placement.
So how should we treat Blair's eye?
First, as always, we put on a highlight and lid colour. For Blair, because her eyelid is hooded, although she has a crease line, it doesn't coincide with her actual contour area of the lid. This is actually really common in Asian eyes, and is also seen in Wendy's eye.
Thus, for Blair's eye, as with Wendy's eye, we place the base shade all the way up to the eyebrows, and the lid shade stops not at the crease, but above it.
Here's an eye diagram showing the placement of base and highlight shades on Blair's eye:
Because Blair's eyes are relatively large in size, and her eye is prominent, she can actually get away with dark lid colours. In fact, they help to recede her eyelid area a little, making it less prominent and more contoured. However I didn't use a dark colour for this tutorial, because Blair wasn't very into dark eyeshadow. So this is the result:
We now look at the placement of the crease shade for Blair. Once again, as previously emphasized, when applying the crease shade, we would like to place the crease not in the crease line of Blair's eye, but further up, in the contour area, where her eyeball meets the eye socket. This enhances Blair's eyes. If we had placed the crease colour right in the crease line, we would be applying the crease colour somewhere in the middle of her eyelid, and this would just make her eyes look really odd.
Here's what I wrote in my previous post in this series, on the issue of crease line vs contour area in Asian eyes. I'm repeating it here, because I think it applies to this eye shape, too. (for the full text, see the previous post in this series):
What we are trying to acheive with the lid and crease colour is to contour the eye. In most Caucasian eyes, the crease happens to meet with the contour of the eye, which is where the soft eyeball ends and where the socket bone begins. Thus, when you look at a typical eyeshadow tutorial that assumes a Caucasian eye shape, they often tell you to put a dark colour in your crease, and if you had such an eye shape, that would be correct, because your crease would coincide with your contour. The only exception to this is Caucasians who have hooded eyelids. However, in Asians, often our crease isn't where our contour is. Here you can see that the actual contour of the eye, where the eyeball meets the eye socket, is much further up than the crease, which happens to be somewhere in the middle of the lid. This is like a hooded eye, but not quite the same thing. In Caucasians it often happens due to aging, where the eyelid just tends to droop down with age, and when this happens, there is a lot of skin where the fold is. In Asians, it's just our genetics, so we don't really have as much skin in the fold, but we do get a similar end result which causes our crease line to lie below our eye contour area.
Thus, when applying Blair's crease colour, we apply the crease colour in the contour area, not in the actual crease line:
So on Blair, this is what it looks like. I do admit the blending could be better, but this is just a rough guide to placement:
This is more or less the basic for Blair's eye - base, lid, and crease. However, because Blair's eye is prominent and round, we can add a little more definition to it by adding a darker colour in the outer V area.
Here is a diagram of where the outer V colour can be placed:
This is how the outer V shade would look on Blair's eye. Once again I think the blending could be better, but as with the previous picture, this is just a rough guide so you can see the placement of eyeshadow:
The key when doing an eye like Blair's is to remember that her eye is prominent, and is quite round, and in some Asians (as is the case for Blair this time), runs the danger of potentially looking contour-less if eyeshadow is applied badly. Thus, we use the shading of the contour/crease colour and the darker colour of the outer V to give her eye a little bit more contour and dimension. We should also be careful to apply the crease colour in the actual contour of the eye socket area, instead of the fold of lid that lies in the middle of her eyelid, in order to enhance the contour the eye. I didn't really use a highlight colour here, because my main focus today was the placement of crease colour and the outer V, but a good highlight colour would also help.
And that's it for today! I hope this post helps someone!
