Tutorial: Contouring and Highlighting.
Hey Everyone!!
I just wanted to mention how happy I am after last night’s Beauty Blogger’s chat! Who else is feeling the love? I thought it was such a great topic, sharing the love between the group and highlighting your favourite bloggers. We need to show support to each other much more often as it is so motivating when you know you are making others smile.
Thankyou to everyone who mentioned me last night, and hello to any new readers reading this!! Welcome!
Today’s post is all about how to Contour and Highlight your face. You may have seen the famous picture of Kim Kardashian (See above), where she is showing her fans how her make-up artist defines her face with foundation. Well, this is an amazing technique, and is so simple to achieve. There are lots of videos online showing you how to do this, but I thought I would put my version together. Hopefully you will find this tutorial helpful!
I must thank my lovely model Charlotte Springer from Mode London for allowing me to demonstrate this technique on her – she has very similar bone structure to Kim Kardashian so I thought she would be perfect to use.
First of all you want to do your eyes and brows. This way you cannot make a mess of your foundation with any powder that drops from your eyeshadow. Then you want to apply your foundation colour as normal. I did not do any concealing here – hence the dark circles under Charlottes’s eyes.
Top tip: Foundation by itself can really flatten the feature on your face, so by contouring you bring your face back to life.
The foundation I used for her base was M.A.C Face and Body – a mix of C4 & N1.
The next stage is fun, as you feel like you are really painting the face. Choose a foundation or concealer (liquids/creams are easier to blend together than two powders, just my personal opinion) 2-3 shades darker than your skin tone. Use a flat foundation brush, such as the Illamasqua foundation brush and start to define the face.
The easiest way to do your cheekbones is to suck your cheeks in. Then from the tops of your ear hold the brush and sweep underneath the highest part of your cheek bone – in the hollow (see picture above). Next sweep your brush along your jaw line and over your temple, forming shapes like the image above. Using just the edge of the brush, “draw” two lines either side of the bridge of your nose. You want to make your nose appear straighter. The foundation I used here was Jemma Kidd Light As Air foundation in Shade 6.
Do not worry about any harsh edges yet, we will sort this out soon.
The next step, grab a foundation or concealer again, this time 2-3 shades lighter than your skin tone! Here we will be highlighting the parts of the face you want to be drawn to. The lighter areas will be brought forward. You can use the same brush if you managed to just keep the darker colour on one side. Sweep over the tops of the cheeks and under the eyes. Take the lighter colour down the centre of your nose, in the cupids bow, centre of your chin and in the centre of your forehead. Last but not least a little above your jawline (underneath your cheekbones, see picture above). I used a Bourjois Healthy Mix concealer in Shade 1.
Now to blend everything together. Use a damp beauty blender or like me a dense foundation brush. The one I used was from a set of Crownbrush UK HD brushes – I love love love this foundation brush. It is very similar to Shu Uemura Goat Hair Natural brush. Don’t go crazy with the blending, you want to gently blend the colours together to create natural definition. So section by section just buff gently along the harsh edges. It really is much easier then it might first seem, so just go for it.
In the above picture you can see what effect you get once everything is blended together nicely.
This final image just shows you what Charlotte’s finished face looked like. Contouring and highlighting is not something I would do every day but maybe for a night out when I want to feel more glam. I hope you guys enjoyed this post, if you have any questions regarding this tutorial please feel free to drop me a comment or an email.
See you soon,
04 Comments
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[…] 5) Foundations… The foundations I use a lot of at the moment are: M.A.C Face and Body – Long lasting, water resistant, natural dewy finish… Illamasqua Skinbase – Medium coverage, semi-matte finish, easy to apply/blend… Arbonne Perfecting Liquid SPF 15 – Medium coverage, semi-matte, good for oily/combination I tend to use my fingers with Face and Body as I find this the best and most efficient way to apply it. I like to use this as my “base” foundation before using other foundations/concealers to contour. Contouring is a brilliant technique to add depth to your face. I wrote a step by step guide on how to contour which you can READ HERE. […]
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