MAKEUP BASICS 101 ON HOW TO CONTOUR AND HIGHLIGHT YOUR FACE: PART 1 CONTOUR

Hello everyone.
I love makeup is no secret as I am a beauty blogger and most of my posts are makeup related. But for today's post I am going to share why I love makeup so much. It sometimes works magic on the face. Contour and highlight are two such tools of makeup which literally transform your face. I shall demonstrate to the best of my capability how I contour and highlight my face.
CONTOUR: What is contouring? To those who are relatively new to makeup or arent much into it let me begin by explaining what is contouring.
Contouring is basically sculpting your face in the areas where the lights dont hit the face directly and create a shadow like effect and hence brings out the contoured features more sharply and angled thereby slimming the face or the contoured area. Contouring the face allows you to add shadow and depth, not all of us are blessed with the perfect nose or the perfect cheek bones. Well no one is and you dont need to be. Contouring allows you to create the illusion. Here is how I do it. For this demonstration I am  using cream based product although one may choose powder based product too.

Taking my SONIA KASHUK FOUNDATION BRUSH I take some of the cream foundation in the 3 shades darker to my skin tone and make a fish face and apply it below me cheek bones along the length of my cheek bone.

Next I apply it along the jaw line and below my chin.

Next I apply it along the edges of the face running it all the way through the temple to the jaw-line.

Next I take the left over product on the brush and run it along the sides of the bridge of the nose like so.

 Next begins the blending. taking the same brush I start to blend in the foundation slowly with soft hands not using too much pressure on the hands else it makes the face looks muddy. You may use a sponge wedge as well, just make sure to damp it with water and squeeze out any excess water. Blend blend blend. And you are done.

From personal experience I can say few things.
1. You are not going to get it perfect when you try it first time around. So just practice you will get it right .
2. It might look odd at first since you are trying something new for the first time, but take pictures and you will see the difference.
3. When you begin contouring always take less product and build it up as required, dont load up too much product and make it messy. You can always add more product as required.
This has become a lengthy post. I shall continue with high-lighting in part two.
Hopefully the collage below will give a better idea of the before and after.
Left side pictures in the collages are BEFORE CONTOUR and Right side are AFTER CONTOUR.

 Here is another one, hopefully you can tell the difference.

After taking the pictures I realized I could have contoured the face a bit more, then the difference would have been more noticeable , but I am overall satisfied you can always add more if you want sharper features or if you are going to be photographed in flash. This much contouring is appropriate ( according to me) for regular basis.
I have also highlighted my face in the "after shots" but will do another detailed post on that, as this post was getting too lengthy.
I hope it was useful.
UNTIL NEXT TIME...