How to contour your face

One of the problems that we see with stage makeup is the face appearing to be all one mask of a same color and your features essentially disappear. This is due to both distance and bright lights (if there are bright lights). If you want to add more of a 3D effect to your face, you will want to use contouring methods, which consists of shadowing and highlighting certain areas on your face.

Shading and highlights on your face will essentially be you re-drawing your face. Essentially, you want to highlight the spots where the light hits the skin on your face and shade the spots where the light creates shadows on your face.  I typically do the shadows first and then the highlights.  Make sure that the shadows don’t bleed too much on where the highlights will need to be.

Shadows:

•       Under the cheek bone;
•       On each side of the nose;
•       Crease in the chin;
•       Under the jaw line.

Highlights:

•  Do a ‘heart’ shape by highlighting over the eyebrows and under-eye area/cheek bone;
•  Middle of the forehead;
•  On the ridge of your nose;
• Tip of the chin.

Note: For the temple area, you may want to play with whether to highlight or shadow it; it will really depend on your skull.  If you have a dip at the temple, most likely you’ll prefer shadowing it. If you don’t, highlighting the area will be your preference.