The Rookie's Guide to Contour Makeup

Contouring is one of the oldest practices in the makeup industry, yet has been overlooked in the way that makeup has been applied in recent decades.

There’s no denying that one of our generation’s most famed reality T.V. stars, Kim Kardashian, has brought upon a contour revival for the millennial beauty scene.

However, the wonders of contouring and highlighting have been a part of Hollywood since the golden age of cinema. Long before contour queen Marilyn Monroe came on the scene, actresses of the 1920s used the practice for a sculptured sense of glamour, through accentuating the natural lines of their face with shading, shaping and contouring.

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The technique seemed to become less popular during the 1970s, when makeup became more concerned with dramatic eye shadows and liners. Remember that terrible streaky blush used in the 1980s? Think of it as contouring gone very wrong.

Contouring is a makeup technique in which bronzer or foundation darker than your natural skin tone is used to create dimension and emphasize the natural shadows of the face, which in turn provides a more defined bone structure.

In order to complement the angular shadows brought upon by the darker contour, the technique of highlighting is used, in a light shimmery white or pink powder or cream to enhance the areas where light naturally hits our faces.

Proper use of highlighting and contouring can transform one’s bone structure, with the potential of completely changing facial appearances. Drag queens are famous pioneers of contouring due to the face changing capabilities inherent to the technique, especially in the attempt of impersonating someone else.

Although in-depth contouring can be used to completely redefine a person’s facial appearance, a milder take on the technique can function to enhance and minimize certain features. Have you always yearned for more prominent cheekbones, a more chiseled jaw, or a more slender nose? Some simple contouring and highlighting will do just the trick of achieving that.

Just look at contouring this way: everything that you highlight is brightened and comes forward, while every part that is contoured with a darker tone recedes and is thus minimized. The secret to contouring is to start off light with your application and build up to a natural looking appearance. This will certainly take a bit of practice and trial and error to discover the type of contouring that works for the shape of your face.

Contouring can get expensive, so for the contour novice, I recommend starting off with powder bronzer, a highlighter, and blush. Once you feel as though you’ve mastered the art of contour application, I suggest moving up to creams and foundations. The latter can go completely wrong if misapplied, but when used correctly has the potential for a stunningly beautiful and natural end result. Here are the basic how to’s of contour and highlighting makeup.

Whether you prefer a powder or cream medium, you will need:

-       A contour foundation or powder about three times darker than your natural skin tone

-       A highlighter that is fairer than your skin tone or a very light pink shade

-       Blush

-       A flat foundation brush

-       An angled bronzer brush

-       A round headed blush brush

-       A sheer settling powder

To Contour:

• After you’ve applied your normal foundation all over your face and neck, but before applying any powder, dip your brush into the cream bronzer/darker foundation to load it up with a good amount of color. Swirl the brush on the back of your hand to take away some of the intensity.
• Start at the middle of the top of your hairline and trace along the perimeter down to your temple. Locate the hollow of your cheekbones. It will be where the shadow naturally falls, diagonally across the side of your face. If you can’t find it, suck in your cheeks and find the hollow areas. The shadow should fall directly in the hollow created by the face.

• Apply the contour color to the hollows of the cheeks, the temples, under the chin, the sides of the nose. You want to trace the shape of a loosely inverted “E” from the temples of your forehead to the hollows of your cheeks and down to the chin and jaw line. Blend into your hairline at the temples, cheeks and jaw.
• Continue to build up the contour color until your bone structure is well defined. (Don’t worry about applying too much contour color; you can always tone it down by blending it out with a powder the same color as your natural skin tone or foundation).

To Highlight:

• The highlighter should be applied to the middle of the forehead, down the center of the nose, under the eyes, under the nose, under the lower lip, the sides of the mouth, top of the apples of the cheeks, and the brow bone.
• Draw the letter C by holding the brush in the middle of your forehead just above your brow and outlining the eye all the way to your temple then down under your eye just above your cheekbone. This will pull that area forward and really highlight your eyes.

• Now BLEND! This is probably the most important step in contouring and achieving a natural and sculpted effect, versus appearing like you just have a ton of makeup on. You can use a wet beauty blender sponge or a blending brush to blend all the contour and highlighter together until there is no more distinction between the two colors.
• Apply a light dusting of loose powder to set the highlighting into place. Now that you’ve got a flawless and well-defined canvas, apply blush to the apples of your cheeks, extra bronzer (if needed), eye liner/shadow, and lip makeup. Your face will look slimmer, subtly transformed, more defined and SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL.