Recently contouring and highlighting has been all the craze and so many celebrities have been looking chiseled to perfection. For the average beauty lover or someone who is just starting out, contouring and highlighting isn't very easy to master. Hopefully these tips and tricks can help you out.
Evidently contouring can transform your face by creating shadows to slim areas or make your cheeks appear more structured and prominent. On the other hand highlighting brings forward the higher points of your face, such as the tip of your nose, cheek bones and above the eyebrow arch.
Before you actually start contouring and highlighting it is important to determine your face shape so you can decide what features you want to highlight and what you want to contour.
Hopefully the chart above can help you to distinguish your face shape and now the following chart is a rough guide of places you're recommended to contour and highlight for your particular face shape. Remember at the end of the day it is your face and if you want to contour or highlight the way a square face or diamond face is suggested to then you can do you! There are no set rules in makeup, just guides to help us start off :)
Contouring and highlighting for every face shape
Another general rule when it comes to contouring and highlighting, which I personally follow is to do a "3 motion" on the right side of my face and an "E" on the left.
To help find my cheekbones I suck in my cheeks while looking into a mirror or place a brush flat from the top of my ear going diagonally toward my mouth. I also always stop my contour at the end of my brow/corner of my eye.
I mentioned above that contouring is done to mimic shadows. A few common places one would contour is generally their forehead to make it appear smaller, or alternatively if your forehead is on the smaller size you would place your highlight there to make it appear larger. You can contour your nose to make it appear straighter, below your lower lip to make it look fuller, your cheek bones as well as below the jaw line to disguise a double chin.
Personally I find a powder contour a lot easier than liquid or cream but again it is all about preference. Choose a shade that is roughly two shades darker than your normal skin tone and that is on the cooler side of brown as it is intended to create a "natural" shadow.
Now lets talk highlight!
As mentioned above the places you highlight are the areas on your face you want to bring forward. These areas include the spots on your face where the light would naturally hit. The highlight shade is generally one to two shades lighter than your actual skin shade because you want your face to appear like the light is always on it bringing forward your best features. By highlight I am referring to a lighter shade concealer! Unlike contouring I always highlight with liquid or cream. Once you have applied your lighter shade of choice you then set it with a lighter shade powder to match and keep that area bright as your normal foundation shade will just darken that area and defeat the highlighting purpose.
Many brands brought out contour and highlighting kits throughout 2015 which is helpful for beginners as they have every shade you would possibly need in one compact place. There are also contour and highlight sticks available.
Here are a few (there are so many more) at varying prices:
That concludes the second post in my 'A Beginners Guide series'. Hopefully this helped you out and remember that the purpose of contouring and highlighting is to create dimension so have fun and play around to figure out what method and guide works best on your face.
Be First to Post Comment !
Post a Comment