Contouring is the art of creating or increasing shadows in certain areas so the face appears to have more structure and definition. It involves using brown tones of blush or pressed powder to contour along the sides of the nose, at the sides of the forehead, under the cheekbones, and in the center of the chin to add color, definition, and shape to the face. Although contouring is an optional step for most daytime makeup applications, it is still rather intriguing and is worthwhile for some women.
Today the popularity of using contouring to reshape the face has subsided to some extent. The likely reason for its decline is that believable-looking contouring is difficult to master (it’s even more difficult than believable-looking blush). Contouring takes skill and patience, and very few women have the time to deal with it every morning. Women who do decide to take the time often end up with a brown stripe under their blush, and that is not the way contouring is supposed to look! Think twice before incorporating this step into your daily makeup routine, at least until you’ve practiced and developed the skill to apply this look softly. Without careful application and conscientious blending, what looks sculptural from the front may look odd from other angles.
Contouring is always done as a separate step, using a completely different brush and shade of powder than for the blush application. Shades of pink, red, and orange are used as blushes; only shades of brown are used in contouring. The safest contour shade to use if you have fair to medium-dark skin tones is one that looks like your skin color when it is tanned. A soft or rich golden shade of brown is generally the perfect color to use when trying to produce realistic shadows on the face. Shades of gray-brown can look dirty, and shades of red-brown and mauve-brown can look like bruising on women with fair to medium-dark skin tones. For women of color, particularly African-American women, either an extremely dark shade of golden brown or a deep chocolate brown color can work exceptionally well.