• Easy Contour Line Drawing
• Easy Contour Guide

Always apply your foundation first. To cheat your way to chiselled cheekbones, simply suck in your cheeks, and using the angled brush, buff the darkest powder into the. Oh, contouring.Search for 'how to contour' on YouTube, and you’ll get more than 227,000 results.On Instagram, the hashtag #contour delivers more than 1.5 million tags. Even here on Lipstick we.

Contour, love it or loathe it, this is the only surefire way to give your face dimension and drama. Now some celebrities make this look super simple, Kimberley, we are looking at you, but trust us when we say, they have a literal army of artists chiselling their cheeks and jaws.

That is not to say that contouring can’t be easy, it can, and we have simplified the routine, so that you can follow at home to get the best results. This really requires patience, and the more you do it, the better you will get at it. Remember the Mona Lisa was not Da Vinci’s first attempt, practice makes perfect.

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Keep reading to find an easy contour guide for your face.

The basics

You can contour with cream or powder products. Cream products will take time to blend, but bring a more dramatic finish. Powders are easier to apply, and sit on the surface of your makeup.

You want a product 2 shades darker to contour, and a lighter shade that is one shade lighter to highlight.

Always contour after you have applied your base. Apply your foundation in the usual way. If you will be contouring with powder products, set your base. If using cream products apply this before you set your makeup.

Start with light

Before we bring depth to your face with a darker shade, we first need to bring light into your face. Bring a triangle of lighter shade under your eyes and into your cheeks, blend this into your base.

Draw a line down the centre of your nose from forehead to tip, finish with a prominent dot. Then add 2/3 lines in the middle of your forehead. Leave those unblended, these will be blended in when you add the dark shades.

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The cheeks

The first place to contour is the cheeks, we are bringing dimension into the face. Suck your cheeks in, creating a hollow. Apply the product into the hollows of your cheeks, buffing for an even finish.

Using a lighter product you can apply to the tops of your cheeks to bring them out further and make the difference more extreme.

Forehead or Fivehead?

If you want to make your forehead appear smaller then you can contour this issue away! Using a brush you can apply a darker shade to the outer thirds of your forehead, either side of the lighter lines.

Blend into your hairline to make this darker addition seamless. Once that is blended buff the lighter shade up into your hairline to even out the depth and shade.

This will be easier to achieve with a cream product. Remember your forehead can be oily so if you have excess oil, you may want tipi invest in a high quality powder product.

Chisel that Jawline

You can define your jawline in a matter of moments, bring the darker shade along your jawline. Buff the product downwards into your neck away from your jaw.

Know the difference between a strong jawline, and a five o’clock shadow. Take it steady and remember that less is more, we are trying to improve our makeup here!

Don’t forget the nose

A thin brush and a cream shade will work best for this. Draw a darker line either side of the light line you drew earlier, and blend. This will thin the the nose and add dimension to the middle of your face.

Finish with highlight

We love powder highlight. Dust across the high points of your cheeks, down the centre of your nose, make that dot pop by adding highlight to the end of your nose.

A little highlight in your Cupid’s bow area will bring harmony to your whole face, and finish off your contour perfectly.

Easy Contour Line Drawing

Instructions

Go to the desired location in the map, set two markers by clicking the map to define a rectangle (or enter coordinates manually). Click the button [get data]. Optionally you can change the number of elevation samples you want in each direction, the more the better. However, if you go beyond 2500 total samples per day, querying data may stop working according to the Google Elevation API description. You can also change the number of contours or set custom contour values. You can save some data in cookies, however there is a limit. Use the manual saving text areas below alternatively.

This script was developed with the Firefox browser and may not work in other browsers. No warranty whatsoever is given, including but not limited to functioning or correctness.

Resources: This script uses the Google Elevation API, Google Maps, jQuery and the CONREC contouring algorithm by Paul Bourke and Jason Davies.

Support this project

Elevation Data

Easy Contour Guide

Version History

Save Contour Map as an SVG file

If you want to have the contour maps as an individual layer (e.g. to create overlays) you can copy the code underneath the image below and save it as an svg file. Please note, as for now, the drawing below is square and you may want to stretch it to cover the actual area in a map.