Z-4 Cheek/Highlight Brush

Z-4 Cheek/Highlight Brush ($92.00) medium-sized, blush brush with a domed edge and tapered bristles (so the lengths get shorter as you move outward from the center). It's not a rounded brush, more flattened, but it is not really thin or flat. The brush is made out of gray squirrel, and the brush head is 35mm in length, 28mm in width, and 15mm in thickness. The brush had a total length of just under 6 inches or 15 centimeters with an open ferrule. It's excellent for applying soft, even color along the cheeks with minimal blending required. Sometimes, after swatching five or six blushes on my cheeks back-to-back, I pay for it the next day with irritated, reddened skin that can result in drier patches, and this brush is very forgiving on the skin without further irritating it--and it manages to make color apply more evenly than many other brushes I own despite the rougher surface. It feels like silk, and it feels like a single swish across the face; you never feel the individual bristles. It's dense without being too heavily packed with bristles but doesn't feel wispy against the skin; just right for versatility, so it can be used with heavily pigmented blushes, sheerer ones, and it can work well with highlighters and bronzers, too.

Hakuhodo G5545 ($48.00) is very comparable in terms of softness and general application, but it is flatter and wider with a more feathery, lighter feel against the skin as it is not as dense. shu uemura #20 ($50.00) is a little more square-ish in shape and flatter, not quite as soft. Sephora #73 Pro Precision Brush ($32.00) is more tapered at the edge, a little squatter, and it is not as soft, though I wouldn't describe it as rough either. MAC 116 ($35.00) is thicker and more rounded at the edge, and it is a lot less soft.