Full Face Contour and Highlighting Techniques

Here’s the deal, my friend Stephanie above is my model for this blog post and she definitely doesn’t have a full face. But using the shading and highlighting techniques I will show you below will work for a full faced person, or someone who just wants to really define their features. So, let’s get started.

Tools You Will Need

What you will need is a bronzer or dark(er) brown eyeshadow, a blush, and and a something to highlight with. This compact from Urban Decayis great because it has everything you need in one place. Then you will need a blush brush, contour brush, and a fan brush. If you don’t have a contouring brush, you could use your existing blush brush–just make sure it is wiped off and clean when you switch between that and your  blush color.

Extreme Contouring and Highlighting

Here she kind of looks like skelator!! But these are some of the areas you can contour and highlight to make a fuller face look slim. It looks like a lot, but once you get the hang of it, you will be a speedster.

1. Once you have applied your foundation, use a bronzer or a matte brown eyeshadow shade (or any darker shade that isn’t going to look ridiculous on you) and your contouring brush, start at the top of the side of your forehead  and shade downwards, staying close to your hairline until you get to your temple. With the same bush, lightly shade in the sides of you forehead with the same contouring color you are using. Then with your highlighter and your fan brush, highlight the center of your forehead.

2. Now suck in your cheeks and with the same tool and contouring color, place that color into the hollows of your cheeks. If you don’t know where that is, go to my cheek contouring tutorial. Now sweep the same color along your jawline. You can get away with doing this is one motion like you are doing a half of the number three or a “c” shape. But  you will have to start that shape by beginning next to your hair line, sweeping down the hollows of your cheeks, back up, and then curved around and down the sides of your jaw-line and under.

3. For contrast, you are going to highlight above your cheekbones by using the same technique I showed you in the cheekbone tutorial. The only difference is that you will need to highlight close to your nasal labial folds (area close to your nose), and then down towards the sides of your mouth. This brings the focus of your face more center instead of outwards.

4. To continue having your face more defined, make sure to contour your nose as well. Check out my nose contouring tutorial to find out how to do that.

5. Making your neck appear slimmer is essential to making your face look slimmer. Doing this is not complicated at all. Just sweep your contouring color of choice from the base of your ear down towards your clavicle bone. Then once you hit your clavicle bone , contour on the sides of it to make it appear more prominent. Next you want to sweep down the front of you neck and if you have a double chin, contour there as well.

Contouring From The Side

Finished Contouring From The Front

Here is the finished look on my good friend Stephanie! Everything should look natural and well blended, no creepy lines or anything.

Just had to show off her pretty smile! This girl is beautiful with or without contouring…just sayin.

XOXO- KENDRA

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