Beauty
How To Contour & Highlight
When you apply foundation to your entire face, you’ve created a blank canvas, so you have to go back and add the dimensions back in. Remember in art class how you used darker shading to push an area away and lighter shading to pull an area towards you? That’s all we’re doing here! It creates the illusion of a stronger jawline, more chiseled cheeks and a slimmer face. And the easiest way to do this is by drawing the letter E on each side of your face to contour and the letter C on each side of your eyes. Anyone can do that, right? I’m showing you how to do it with both cream and powder formulas together for staying power, but you can certainly do one or the other.
TOOLS:
- Cream Foundation or Cream Bronzer - you can simply find a cream foundation that is four or so shades darker than your foundation (I love Jouer Age-Repairing Perfector Foundation in Tawny for fair to medium skin tones or Almond for darker skin tones) or you can try Hourglass Illume, a cream bronzer + highlight duo that I’ve been using on my clients with fair to medium skin tones for at least three years now.
- A Flat-headed Foundation Brush - this really presses the cream into the skin and does all the work for you. I love Dior Full Coverage Fluid Brush for an investment but Flat Top Kabuki Brush will get the job done too.
- Blush/Contour Brush - the best brush to blend cream foundation or bronzer is a natural-bristled round-headed one that is densely packed like the Cozzette Contour Stylist Brush, the iconic must-have for makeup artists at Fashion Week around the world.
- Bronzing + Highlighting Powder - you can certainly buy them separately but I love Trish McEvoy Dual Resort Bronzer + Highlight because it’s the perfect amount of warmth with a hint of shimmer.
- Angled Contour Brush - I love Sigma’s Large Angled Contour Brush for its fluffy angled bristles.