Makeup

An Expert’s Secret to Contouring

A few weeks ago How to be a Redhead sat down with celebrity makeup artist, Sherilyn Stetz. Sherilyn is a celebrity makeup artist who has worked on the set of Desperate Housewives for five seasons and on the recent hit, Bridesmaids; she has also done makeup for Dixie Carter, Tom Hanks, Marg Helgenberger (a beautiful redhead!) and many, many more!

We all know that there are different rules when applying makeup on redheads. Take Adele for example, everyone loves her makeup because her skin always looks so flawless. The secret is simple: contouring. 

Sherilyn said, “Contouring creates a sense of balance, adding definition to your makeup with color. It is one of the oldest makeup tricks, but one of the most frequent left-out steps in makeup applications. Remember that contouring is simply bringing our your best features and minimizing ones you’d like to hide. That being said, you can take either powdered shadow or a light and dark shade of foundation,whichever is easier for you (shades in the brown family are the best for redheads).”

Three steps on how to contour:

1. Your contour shade should be a few shades darker than your skin. “The areas you apply will makes that area appear smaller and recede (i.e undercheeks, sides of nose).”

2. One of your shades will be lighter than your skin by a few shades and known as a highlighter. “You will apply this to the areas you want to help come forward or emphasize(i.e top of cheeks,brow bone).”

3. The other shade will be the color of your skin.

How to Contour a Wide Forehead:

Apply the darker bronzer to each temple and blend. This will create a shadow effect causing the head to look more rounded.

How to Contour the Chin:

To minimize a double chin, apply bronzer along the jaw line and blend it down, towards your neck. This creates depth.

Sherilyn’s last, but most important tip, “Remember to blend, blend, blend until you just see a hint of the magic! It really makes a huge difference.”

Rock it like a Redhead!