A brush with beauty: Quick guide to makeup tools to help perfect your look

Know the difference between a blending and a shader brush? Always wondered what a fan brush is used for? Here’s help at hand.

They say, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, but hey, it also lies in the right beauty tools! One look at makeup tutorials on YouTube or Instagram, and you’d see a wide variety of brushes being used by makeup artists to achieve that flawless look. You, too, can master the beauty game, but first, you should know the right brush to get that on-point eyeliner, perfect contour or that highlight on fleek. So, here’s your brush-essential guide:

Stippling brush: You can apply foundation, bronzer or even blush with it. The brush has two sets of bristles, white synthetic fibres at the top and black natural fibres at the bottom.

You can take foundation on the white bristles, pat them on your entire face and then to blend it in, swirl the brush in small circles.

Kabuki brush: This brush — defined by its distinctive stocky shape — is used for buffing-in foundation or powder. It basically polishes the look and helps create soft airbrushed, poreless-looking skin.

Fan brush: The brush fans out in a wide angle to cover maximum skin area made of soft bristles. It is used to apply highlighter smoothly and evenly.

Angular brush: This brush is perfect for applying contour or bronzer. Be it in powder form or cream based, draw a line with the product on your cheeks and jaw line first. Then, using the contour or angular face brush, blend the product in so that no lines are visible. Here’s a tute that’ll help you further:

Blending brush: A must-have, this brush is used to blend eyeshadow and show the transition shade so no harsh lines are visible.

There are different types of blending brushes: fluffy, tapered, petite, large and dome shaped. The bristles are made of natural or synthetic material.

Crease brush: Made of synthetic material, this brush is used to precisely apply and blend shadow into the creases to add depth to eye makeup.

Shader brush: The brush is also made of synthetic bristles and used to pack on a lot of colour to apply on the lid.

A large shader brush can also be used to blend concealer under your eyes.