You know what’s worse than watching paint dry? Waiting for eyebrow hairs to grow in. Eyebrow guru to-the-stars Kristie Streicher (her clients include Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams) says that in order to coax your brows to grow into a new growth pattern, you need to stop tweezing them completely for a month. But until then, to figure out how to solve the problem of sparse brow hairs, I asked Gucci Beauty makeup artist Aaron Henrikson to show us his technique for creating understated brows with enough shape and dimension that no one will know you’re enduring the growing-out phase.

Step 1: Start by combing the brows in the direction of growth, which shows off length and fullness to their best advantages. Typically, this means combing up at the front of your brows. Toward the arch and tail, comb out.

Step 2: Henrikson likes to start with a lighter brow shade to establish shape and then a darker shade to add dimension. He uses a light-blonde brow pencil (in this case, Gucci Eye Precise Sculpting Brow Pencil in Blonde). Note that the pencil he’s using is actually two shades lighter than the model’s natural brow color, as he wants to avoid a thick, obvious shaping outline. He draws light, medium-length strokes in the direction of brow growth, starting at the arch. To encourage more of an arch, he then moves the pencil in an upward motion, which results in a feathery, non-blocky brow.

Step 3: Longer, fuller brows tend to look more youthful and better frame the face. Henrikson takes the same brow pencil to extend the tail of the brow. If you take a pencil up from the outer corner of your eye, it should meet the outer corner of your eyebrow.

Step 4: Henrikson then uses the second darker brow pencil to fill in the brows. Although the model’s natural brow color matches the Raven shade of brow pencil, he chooses Brunette, explaining: “A lot of women think your brow hair should be the same color as your hair, but it’s better to go one shade lighter when filling them in. You don’t want to overpower the hair.” At the inner corner of the eye, he starts by drawing little strokes, following hair growth upward and outward. You can do the same, where needed, all over the brow.

Step 5: For comparison, the finished look. On the left is the “After,” and on the right is the “Before.”