I want to put as a disclaimer, that I wasn't wearing any foundation. It might show even better over a foundation or primer alone.
We've had all of these wonderful posts on BPJ about contouring and I've really wanted to do it myself, but after having an entire team of MAC artists stumped on what to use as a contour color, I was feeling pretty hopeless.
This evening I was sitting at my desk, determined to perfect lining my upper eyelid (I've pretty much stuck to my waterline), when I started to play with my blushes (a fairly common habit). I was playing with my Smashbox Blush/Bronzer duo in Cosmopolitan, that Martini gave me, trying to get the sheer apricot color blush to work (I succeeded btw) when I started staring at the "bronzer". I knew as a bronzer it wouldn't work, not that I need bronzing, but I didn't want it to go to waste. I stared and stared before I picked up my brush and started going through the contouring motions. Much to my surprise it worked!!!
Most people generally contour with darker colors or bronzy colors so I wasn't quite sure why this worked. The bronzer in this duo is a very matte nuetral brown with almost no distinguishable undertones. After a bit of thought I realized it had to be the neutralization of my natural peach and bronze undertones (a light bulb moment). The MAC girls didn't want to use a darker brown because the didn't want to make me gray, but lighter wasn't necessarily the way to go either. The neutralization of my undertones creates the same shade effect warm brown colors have on women with lighter skin tones. It's subtle and very natural, but the effect is very dramatic. I have naturally high round cheeks and this brings them out. Also, I created more of a defined jaw with the technique I learned from Ccee's blog. This is so great and I'm very happy to be able to participate in contouring. I honestly thought I might have been to dark for it.
*Sigh*...my face looked so fierce from the front, but my digital camera wouldn't pick it up in the lighting I was under. Fierce (haha, I blame the usage on my gay male friends and their obssession with ANTM) never happens for me. I have almost doll like proportions to my face, minus the large forhead, but with the contouring I felt very Angelina Jolie-ish. Maybe I'll do some sort of Angelina Jolie inspired makeup look later on today or tomorrow. She has some great photoshoots and if anyone has a personal favorite they would like to see, please let me know.
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