Contouring is a great technique to practice. It’s one of the easiest ways to make yourself look better in photos, as it adds depth and prevents flattening. It’s also the basis for a lot of character design makeup, as it allows you to change the appearance of your facial structure (making your face look thinner or wider, making cheekbones more dramatic, making eyes look sunken, etc.).

Some costumes require more contouring than others. When I cosplay glamorous, feminine, or more slender characters (or anything drawn by CLAMP), I may use quite a bit of contouring to try to make my face look slimmer or more angular. When I cosplay stockier or broader-faced characters (e.g. Captain Jack Harkness; Nathan Drake; Clint Barton), I actually minimize contouring to make my face look wider and flatter.

Compare the effect different contouring produces in these two photos:

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It’s a good idea to experiment with your makeup design for each character, and decide what style of contouring works best for each one!

Basic Contouring – or, How to Make the Camera See Your Face in Three Dimensions

Unlike humans, who see depth via binocular vision, the camera has only a single lens. This means that in photos, anything that is not defined by shadow or perspective tends to get mashed into a single flat shape. When you are the thing that gets flattened, it usually isn’t flattering. (You’ve heard the saying “the camera adds 15 pounds”? This is why.)

The basic principle behind contouring is to simulate naturally-occurring highlights and shadows with cosmetics, so the camera can “see” your face as a three-dimensional object, and you still look normal in photos instead of washed-out or flattened.

To that end, we’re going to put lighter makeup on all the places that would naturally reflect light, and darker makeup in places where there would normally be shadows. How much/what color makeup you use will determine how dramatic the effect is. If you want to look mostly natural, keep your colors neutral and don’t apply them too heavily. Be sure to blend everything well to eliminate hard edges!

FOR REFERENCE: The ideal contouring pattern varies from person to person, because everyone’s face has a unique shape. But very generally speaking, these are the areas of the face that can benefit from highlight (cream) or shadow (tan). You don’t have to do all of them, but I would suggest experimenting with different combinations to determine which areas are most beneficial to shade on your own face. (Please forgive my very rough coloring job here!) 

Beginner-Friendly Tutorial

Contouring can get very elaborate, but you don’t have to slather on layers of makeup to see a difference in your photos. You can get great results even with some very simple shading! In this demo, I’ll show you simple contouring techniques for a natural look suitable for general photography (meaning, I’m not demonstrating a specific character design).

Here are the supplies I’ll be using. I’ll give more details about each of these as I reach each step:

• foundation
  
• highlighter (any makeup slightly lighter than foundation)
  
• contour shadow (any makeup slightly darker than foundation)
  
• neutral eyeshadow, slightly darker than skin tone (optional)
  
• makeup brushes

Here’s the baseline – my face freshly washed and moisturized, using a light-coverage BB cream as foundation:

I am a pancake! My cheekbones have vanished, and my forehead is just a rectangle. If this were a flash photo lit directly from the front instead of by the overhead lights in my bathroom, my face would look like a washed-out platter with no depth whatsoever.

Since I like having cheekbones in photos, I’m going to use some highlighter to bring up the value of the areas I want to look more prominent, such as the top of the cheekbone. For a more feminine look, you can also highlight the browbone (just beneath the arch of the eyebrow). Depending on the shape of your face and the effect you want, you can also highlight the center of the forehead, the bridge of the nose, along the hairline, and/or the chin.

TO APPLY: If your highlighter is a liquid or cream, make a row of small dots across the cheekbone, then blend with your fingers or a sponge. If it’s a powder, smile wide and sweep the color lightly over the top of the cheek toward the corner of your eye, then relax your cheeks and blend the color out with a brush.

For other areas of the face, follow the same technique (row of dots/single sweep and blend). Try to keep your application light. You don’t want makeup sitting visibly on top of your skin after it’s blended. 

There are MANY types of cosmetic highlighters on the market, but you can use any type of makeup that is one to two shades lighter than your foundation. For cosplay/photography purposes, you generally want to avoid things that have a lot of shine or shimmer (as they can reflect camera flash), but any matte or low-gloss makeup will work. Here are a few of the products I’ve used as highlighter:

COLOR NOTE: Make sure any contouring makeup you use doesn’t clash with your skin! Keep all your makeup in the same color family for a natural look. You can step up or down in value (lightness/darkness), but don’t shift the color tone, or you may end up with a weird patch effect in photos.

Once we’ve highlighted the areas we want to reflect more light, we need to shade in the areas that would normally be in shadow, such as below the cheekbones. For this, you want to use something one to two shades darker (but in the same color family) as your foundation. This can be a contouring cream, bronzer, neutral blush, or even eyeshadow.

To find a natural-looking shadow tone, I suggest matching your contour makeup with the shadows you see on your face (such as below the nose or jawline). Don’t go much darker, or you may look bruised!

TO APPLY: Suck your cheeks in, and draw an imaginary line from the hollow of your cheeks (between your molars) to the hinge of your jaw (just in front of your ear). Relax your cheeks, and apply your shadow along that line. For creams, make a row of small dots, then blend with fingers or a makeup sponge. For powders, use a brush to sweep the color along that diagonal line, then blend out the edges so you don’t have a hard line where the color stops.

For precise contouring, I like to apply my shading powder using an angled cheek brush (the one I’m using here is a hakuho-do Kusabi brush; the sample pic below is by bareMinerals), but any kind of powder brush will work.

I add a bit of shadow below my jawline as well, especially if I’m going to be crossplaying (as male characters are often depicted with stronger jawlines). This also helps define your jaw so you don’t look like you have a double chin (or no chin!) in badly-lit photos.

I also add a very light contour shadow running from the outside of my forehead to the temple, because my forehead is curved and I want the camera to see it that way.

Be conservative with this application! You don’t want to look like you have divots in your head. 🙂

Next, I shade lightly around the eye area using a neutral eyeshadow that is slightly darker than my skin tone. (You can also use the same contouring shadow you used on your cheeks, if it’s not too dark.) This is just to add depth so my eyes aren’t washed out in photos; I’m not doing any proper eye makeup (liner/mascara) yet.

I recommend using a soft eyeshadow brush with rounded bristles, like this:

TO APPLY: Using a small brush, sweep a very light layer of color between the browbone and the crease of the eyelid, then blend. Depending on the shape of your eyes, you may also want to shade into the area between the inner corner of your eye and the eyebrow to add depth. Follow the areas where you see naturally-occurring shadows above your eyes, and keep the application very light.

The color simply intensifies the natural shadows already on your face so the camera can pick them up. It shouldn’t look dark or unnatural. For comparison, here’s a photo with and without eye area shading:

…And that’s basic contouring!

In other words, that’s the first layer of your makeup design. 🙂 From here, you can go on and add other cosmetics such as eye makeup, blush, lipstick, stubble, scars, or whatever other character-specific makeup design you want to do, but this basic contouring will allow the camera to see your face properly without flattening you into a pancake.

Here are the before-and-after shots from this demo, so you can see the difference even a small amount of contouring makes: 

Hooray! No more pancake face!

Remember, the contouring can be customized, intensified, or removed as necessary to help you better resemble your character. Contouring can be very subtle or highly dramatic. Experiment with different shading effects to see how you can change your face!