Contouring is like and independent country of the makeup world that has gone through significant popularity boost over the past years. It turned from the makeup artist’s secret into the part of people’s makeup routine. But could you imagine that people would contour not just their faces, but also legs, abdominal muscles, arms, chests?
That is how far contorting has gone.
If you manage to contour your face successfully, you’ll practically change the shape of your face without any plastic surgeries.
A couple of darkening and highlighting tricks make a huge difference and help to transform your round or heart-shaped face into an oval one with gorgeous cheek bones everybody is so obsessed with right now.
And, as much as natural beauty is much more valuable than those generalized beauty ‘standards’, it’s still fun to experiment with makeup and come up with different looks that would suit your mood, accentuate your features and maybe conceal those few imperfections you might be not quite pleased with.
Face contouring is that makeup skill many of us want to master and improve. So, here are a couple of useful tips and steps to show you how to contour your face.
What makeup do you need to contour your face?
- Choose the right products that would suit your skin tone. In order to be able to contour, you have to get either contouring and highlighting sticks and powders, or dark and light concealers, or two foundations that are a couple of shades darker and lighter than your skin tone.
- I’d say that creamy contouring sticks or concealers are the most comfortable to use for this matter. But remember that if you choose creamy products, you’ll need to get powders of according shades to set them in place.
- Use only mat products to contour your face.
- Don’t forget about highlighter and blush. These products will give your skin that healthy glow foundation and contouring products cover up.
- Visit Allure.com to learn how to compile your own contouring kit.
Steps to contour your face
- Determine your face shape. As you’ll see later, this factor will define where and how you’ll apply this or that product
- Gather tools suitable for contouring. You’ll need a medium concealer/contour brush to apply your products if you don’t have them in sticks, as well as duo fiber foundation brush or beauty sponge to blend them and powder brush to set everything with powders.
- Apply your regular foundation and use concealer to cover up any skin imperfections you might have.
- Grab your dark contouring color and start drawing basic lines to correct/improve the shape of your face. Cheekbones, temples, jaw lines and chin are the areas darker color is applied on to create the illusion of shade and greater definition of your face features.
- Proceed to highlighting. Use the light product to draw the highlighting lines on the bridge of your nose, on the cupid’s bow of your top lip, under your eyes and on your forehead.
- Look at the picture below to figure out how exactly you’re supposed to apply contouring and highlighting products depending on the shape of your face.
- Take your beauty blender or duo fiber brush and start blending the lines until they merge with your base foundation and look like quite natural shades on your face. Don’t be too rough with your brush. Move it in circular motions.
- Make sure to eliminate harsh lines, as well as too obvious ‘boundaries’ between darker and lighter areas. Soft color transition is something you should aim at.
- Apply a little bit of highlighter and blush (you still remember about that healthy glow, right?)
- Once everything is blended, your contour job is nearly done. You just need to go over the contoured areas with powders of proper shades (darker for shaded areas and lighter for highlighted areas) or transparent powder to set the finished look and make it last longer.
Remember, that makeup is a form of art. So, everyone does it differently. There’s no such thing as the only true way to contour your face, or to do your eyebrows, or to apply your blusher, etc. So, feel free to experiment and practice to reach the look you like the most
But, those who find face contouring quite challenging and feel like they’ll never learn how to contour properly, should definitely seek professional’s support.
Go to HireRush.com to leave a request for out makeup artists. They’ll do your makeup and teach you how to contour at the same time. And, don’t give up on self-contouring, as practice is our best teacher.
