Easy and Subtle Contouring Steps

I got to looking around on my site and seen that I had a lot of concealing and highlighting but not as much contouring posts. Which is surprising because I love to contour. The picture above is just bronzer and the rest of my face products on the left side and the right pic is some contour added in. 

This is a more subtle contour. You can make it more dramatic though. This is also an easy guide to contouring because we're gonna do this backwards a little bit. So this is a faster and easy way to contour if you're a beginner or just don't have a lot of time.

The first 2 pictures are just bronzer, which I apply with a larger face brush and dust around the perimeter of the face. Both pics are showing you where I've placed my bronzer and blush. The bottom left, I'm using a smaller angled brush from Morphe. It's supposed to be a blush brush but I feel like it's too small to do that so I use it for contour. So taking a contour powder that is darker than my bronzer and more cool toned, I just start at the top of the ear and go diagonally toward the lips (not all the way just in that direction). The reason I find this easier is because where the bronzer and blush have already been placed it gives me a bit of a guide to go by. What I mean is, I try to stay under the the blush and not go past the edges of the bronzer. Plus doing it this way means I have to blend less. I usually hit the areas where the bronzer has been placed. So I go up the temples and the sides of the forehead as well if I need to. Keep that in mind, only contour the areas you want smaller. Highlight the areas you want to be more prominent or noticed more. Just like in clothes, darker clothes make you appear slimmer so darker contour makes the face seem smaller or slimmer.

The top pick is the contour placed. You could leave it like this actually if you wanted something very dramatic and just buff the edges underneath a little but I know that some wouldn't be comfortable with that. So to show you how I blend it out and make it more subtle, I use the foundation brush (or sponge) I used for foundation that day and blend the bottom of the bronzer and contour. Then I use the blush brush that applied my blush without anymore product on it and just touch up the areas where I put my blush. After doing those two things you're left with a much more subtle contour that's a little bit more than bronzer but not heavily sculpted. Of course you could do the more traditional way of contouring which would be to contour first but I like doing it last or next to last that way I don't apply too much, get out of hand by putting it everywhere, or look manly by placing it too low on the sides of the face.

Of course this post was only about subtle contouring and not really sculpting the face. I didn't include nose contouring or anything. I can do a post about that as well. I just wanted to show you an easier way (I think) of contouring if it intimidates you, that's also very fast as well.