How to: Contour

First things first, what is contouring? Put simply contouring is when you take a slightly darker colour than your usual skintone or foundation in the areas that recede (or you want to look like they recede) from your face to create an illusion of more of a shadow there in order to make your face look thinner and your overall makeup look better. 

Before contouring:

To contour I would hugely recommend RealTechniques contour brush, but any brush that gets gradually thinner is just fine. A dual fibre brush like this one is perfect if you're new to this as it lessens the chance of you using too heavy a hand with the product.

To start off I would recommend using a powder then as you get more confident you can bring in different types of contour such as liquid or gel formulas.

The first place everyone contours is under the cheekbones, this is very easy to find but if you struggle just pat your face around the cheek area and when you feel the bone you know to put the product underneath. Focus the majority of the product towards the back of your cheekbone and gradually blend out towards the centre of your face. But never take the contour past the pupil of you eye, that is where the contour should stop otherwise it will look completely unnatural. When you've finished take whatever's left of the product onto your ear so you don't have a very obvious dark line along the side of your face and a pale ear.

Next comes the temple, again this is easy to find. Just pat (lightly, very lightly) some of the powder into the hollows at the side of your face and this will instantly thin out your face and give it more dimension.

I always take my contour under the jaw line and my chin, because I'm a little self-conscious about my chin and I genuinely really love the way it looks. Again use a light hand with this as you don't want it to look like you've got a great big dirt line under your face! Just use a light hand to create the illusion of a shadow under the jaw.

Lastly for the face, take a little more of the product on the brush and just lightly dust it along the outline of your face to give everything more dimension and blend it all together. This will help make the contour look much more natural and seamless.

 After Contouring:

Additionally, some people like to contour the nose, if that's something they want to make look longer and slimmer. To do this just take a smaller bush and the same product you've been using before and outline your nose. Then just  blend this out until it's not obvious that you've contoured your nose.

After everything:

This has been a really highly requested post guys so I hope you enjoyed this and it helped some of you out. If it did I'd love to know in the comments.

xxx