Contouring the face - practical

Today in our practical session, we learned how to properly contour and highlight the face. Our tutor firstly gave us a demo and then we paired up and had to recreate the style that she had done on the model.

This was my setup for my contouring and highlighting application. 

The products I used were:

• Illamasqua Matte Primer
• Illamasqua Sculpting Powder Duo in Lumos and Heliopolis
• Illamasqua Blusher Duo in Lover and Hussy
• Illamasqua Loose Powder in white
• Kryolan Dermacolour Camouflage concealer palette
• Kryolan foundation cream palette
• Kryolan five colour blusher palette
• Kryolan Glamour Glow palette
• Kryolan triangle powder puff

To start with, we applied a basic face coverage using the Kryolan foundation palette and camouflage concealer palette. I used the techniques I learned from my basic face coverage lesson which I have previously blogged about.

(This was my partner (Annabel) after I applied her face makeup.)

When contouring and highlighting, you should highlight the bits of the face that stick out and you should contour the bits that suck in. For the highlight shade, you should go 1-2 shades lighter than the model's skin tone. You should map the face out with highlighter first so you know where to apply your contour later on. The places that should be highlighted on the face are under the eyes, above the cheekbones, on the jawline, the eyebrow bone and you can also apply it to the nose and forehead if it is needed.

For contouring, you should go 1-2 shades darker than the model's skin tone. To find where about on the cheek to contour your model's face, you should ask them to slightly suck their cheeks in and then ask them if it's okay for you to use your hands on their face, when you have their permission, you should feel the cheeks to find the cheekbone. Take your contour shade and slightly curve the colour round the bone and shade it in but making sure you don't bring it too far forward towards the mouth. If your model has a larger forehead, you can contour round the top of it to make it look smaller. If they have a wider nose, you can contour the sides of it to make it look smaller, if they have a longer nose then you can contour the bottom of it to make it look smaller but don't contour on top of the nose as this is where the highlight should go. You can also contour the jawline which is especially good for profile shots as this gives the jaw a clean, strong look but be careful when applying the product here that you don't apply too much and it ends up looking like a beard as our tutor joked.

(You can see the strong contour along Annabel's cheekbone and then the strong highlight just slightly above it. In the second image, you can see how I have contoured her nose which has made it slightly thinner, I also went in with the contour on her forehead to reduce it slightly.)

After you have done these steps, you can use your powder puff dipped in the white loose powder to go over any places on the face that may move or need more coverage. This could be used in areas such as the eyelid, around the nose and around the mouth.

When it comes to applying blusher, you should take the end of your brush and flick the blusher into the palette so you have a loose powder version of the shade (mix colours if necessary) then with your blusher brush, apply to the back of your hand first before putting on your model's face incase the colour doesn't match their skin tone or the colour is too strong.

(You can see the highlight and contour very strongly here)