The Brow Engineer: How This Brow Artist Turns Eyebrows Into Art Forms

Pia Lee recalls the moment her fascination with eyebrows started.

Her friend was competing in a pageant and wore a full face of makeup. “I couldn’t stop staring at her brows. Sobrang ganda ng kilay niya that night. Brown, perfectly shaped. Kahit putok na putok yung blush on niya, sa kilay pa rin ako nakatingin.”

The next day, back in school minus the makeup and with brows that had been shaped by the artist, her friend looked like a different person. “That’s when I realized kung ano ang nagagawa ng brows.”

Pia was just 15, 16 then—still in high school. But her interest in brows never went away.

Other things kept her busy. In college, she studied electronics and communications engineering. She graduated and passed the board exam but ended up practicing for only a year. Her heart just wasn’t in it—her real love was music. And so she devoted her time to her alternative pop rock band Bluewish. 

Getting ready for performances meant doing her brows. “Kilay lang and lip tint, and you’re good to go. It’s so simple to do and yet it can transform you.”

She found herself wanting to do the same for other people. “I wanted to transform people through their brows.”

She started with her bandmates and her friends. “I experimented. I practiced on all of them—guys, girls. They were supportive. They let me do it. I did people’s eyebrows for free. I plucked, shaved and drew on their brows with an eyebrow pencil.”

Kieran Punay

For the love of brows

That was in 2008. Pia did this for years—juggling performing with her band and her mission to transform brows. Fixing up people’s eyebrows was something she really enjoyed. “It made me happy.”

Sometimes they went to her house in Malolos, Bulacan, but more often than not, she went to them—her aunts’ homes, their friends’ homes, and other people’s houses—offering eyebrow services without charging a fee.

Until one day, somebody said to her, “Alam mo, magaling ka. If you’re good at something, don’t do it for free.” That stuck with her. She wasn’t really making money in the band. Maybe, she thought, she should ask people to pay.

It was 2014. By then, she had gotten married and was a new mom. “When you’re single, ok lang, hindi naman kami maluho. Pero pag umiiyak na yung anak mo…and bilang nanay, parang, ‘Hala, wala akong mai-contribute,’ kahit napakabait naman ng asawa mo. So sabi ko, sige nga, I’ll start charging P100.”

Teachers would ask her to go to their school to do their brows. “If there were 10 of them, I’d get P1000.” She became known in her circles for her brow work.

Pia’s husband was then working in Singapore. She moved there temporarily so they could try for another child. When she returned to Manila, she found herself struggling. “Depression and anxiety hit me because I knew I had no career to go back to—wala na yung banda.”

Kieran Punay

She also realized that band life would have been hard when she had two kids to take care of. “I barely had any experience in engineering. I found myself contemplating: what can I do? I had to find my purpose. But I didn’t know how to do anything—all I knew was doing eyebrows.” She had the talent for it, Pia knew. “Yun na lang yung maaasahan ko.”

On a trip to Singapore, she came across microblading, a semi-permanent cosmetic tattoo technique to fill in or enhance eyebrows that involved using a blade to deposit pigment in the skin. “I told my husband, ‘mag-aaral ako.’ He supported my dream. It wasn’t going to be cheap, but we saved up for it.”

Pia studied microblading and practiced it for three years. But she wasn’t entirely satisfied with the procedure. “I noticed things like scarring. There were also clients who would often ask for a retouch and then you had to slice the skin again. We couldn’t do it on clients who were on blood thinners because it causes bleeding. It was also not recommended for people with oily skin. There were a lot of restrictions.”

Kieran Punay

Discovering different strokes

She came across Nataliya Yeremenko, a brow artist from Estonia known as The Mother of Strokes. Nataliya developed a technique for creating hyper-realistic, natural-looking eyebrows called hairstrokes. “I saw her work and thought, ‘This is the future of eyebrows.’”

But Pia didn’t have enough money to go through more training. She decided to experiment on her own.

“Marunong naman akong magkilay. Marunong akong gumamit ng pen. So I might as well try. It’s still tattooing, but the needle and technique are different.”

She practiced on her mom and other family members. “I had a lot of willing victims. I also had clients who were willing. I’d tell them, ‘Iba na ‘to, retouch kita.’ My clients were very supportive of my journey too.”

Pia is one of the pioneers of the hairstrokes technique in the Philippines. “Hairstroke brows are different from microblading. It doesn’t involve the slicing of skin. We use a machine to deposit pigment in the skin superficially. No bleeding. Walang sugat, just little scratches. No downtime—you can go straight to a party. And it’s very natural looking.”

Kieran Punay

She has also created her own award-winning technique called Yapistrokes, which she named after herself. Pia’s nickname is Yapi. She has since patented and trademarked it.

Clients used to go to her home in Bulacan and she did their eyebrows in her living room. Eventually, she opened Kilay Alert Aesthetic Clinic, also near her house in Bulacan. “Nakikita ko naman na dinadayo ako ng clients kaya hindi ko na kailangan lumayo.”

Pia’s clients are happy to travel to Bulacan so she can do their brows. “We have clients who travel from Mindanao, Cebu, Bicol, Batanes. We have many clients who are balikbayans and OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers). They travel from other countries.”

The clinic serves clients of all ages, including seniors as old as 92. She also has celebrity clients including Jillian Ward,, Carmina Villaroel, Pinky Amador, Wilma Doesnt, Pauline Mendoza, and Angelu De Leon.

The definition of good brows

How does Pia define good brows? “Good brows bring out a client’s true beauty. Walang perfect na kilay. Walang symmetrical na kilay. Kaya ang motto ko sa clinic, ang kilay kahit hindi pantay, basta bagay.”

Yapistrokes is one of the ways to achieve this. Her clinic offers other services, says Pia. “We also have a shading technique. We call that shadow brows, ombre brows. There are also combinations. It depends on what the client wants or needs. We have to assess.” There’s a lot to consider—not just the client’s desires and features but also their lifestyle.

Pia is the master artist at the clinic but she has also trained junior and senior artists including her sister Joan. “Ang galing niya. Clients now look for her,” Pia says.

Pia has won awards for her eyebrow artistry. She was the champion of the machine hairstrokes category at PMU Beauty Arabia in Dubai in 2024. This event gathers world-renowned speakers to showcase the newest techniques shaping the future of Permanent Makeup (PMU) and Scalp Micropigmentation (SMP).

She also represented the Philippines in The World Universal League of Permanent Makeup in Turkey.

But perhaps more meaningful than those accolades are the stories of people whose lives she has quietly changed. She recalls an older lady who walked into the clinic looking sad. “By the time she stepped out, she looked five years younger.”

Kieran Punay

What Pia does is design brows to enhance each person’s best features. “Not everyone has perfect features. For example, if a client’s eyes are pretty, I will design her eyebrows to highlight them. You can really see the transformation.” One client even had people asking if she’d gotten a nose job after Pia did her brows—that’s how dramatic the difference can be.

Pia cries as she tells the story of a 14-year-old client—a burn survivor who was hurt in a house fire when she was just 4. “Her mom was my classmate. I reached out. She’s such a talented girl. She sings so well, she draws well. But she hides under a big hat. I told her mom, I’ll do her eyebrows. She was so happy.”

The result of the brow reconstruction was remarkable—you can see it online. Pia shares her clients’ eyebrow transformations on social media. “It’s an avenue for my craft,” she says.

There are clients who go to her to ask her to fix botched brows that they got done elsewhere. Pia said, “I usually ask them, ‘Do you have patience?’ They often have to do tattoo removal first. Then we’ll show them what we can do for them.”

Pia is also a certified SPMU (semi-permanent makeup) instructor. She’s taught the hairstroke technique to other masters.

Her techniques and rates may have changed over the years but she still finds the same joy in working on people’s brows. “The satisfaction I see in my clients—that’s my vitamin.”