One image sits under these three letters: ash (efer), and the dull grey it leaves behind. From that colour Hebrew builds an adjective (grey), a verb (to turn grey), and then a surprise jump: makeup. Spread powder on a face and you are literally ashing it, le'aper. Notice how a single colour-word reaches from a burnt-out fire to a cosmetics counter. Every word here is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
Only two binyanim are lexicalized here. Pi'el takes the colour and does something deliberate with it (paint a face), while hif'il describes the slow drift into grey. There is no everyday pa'al "to ash"; the root lives mostly as colour and cosmetics.
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.