Black vs. White & Contouring techniques

I went to work super early today to get some work done before people came into the office. I also decided to bring my makeup bag cause I knew I had time to primp my face before anyone else showed up to see how terribly tired and puffy I looked. While looking in my broken little mirror I have sitting at my work desk I sat and looked in the mirror and said "What do I want to do today?! What should I look like?" These simple questions inspired this current beauty blog.

Makeup really transforms a natural looking face into anything you want it too. I think that's why I enjoy it so much. It's a way for me to be creative on my face. My face is my own blank canvas each and everyday to do with it what I please.

Simple little makeup tricks can change the ENTIRE look of your face with the swipe of a brush.
From highlighters to bronzer.You can use dark and lights to completely transform your eyes, cheekbones and lips! It's awesome!

The KEY to white versus black or highlighter versus bronzer is that white accentuates what you already have making it look bigger or more noticeable. Black or bronzer makes things more defined and smaller looking.

Let's take the eyelid for example. Here are some examples of how white versus black changes everything on the lid.

WHITE

 

White is a great eyelid opener. If your running late to work take some shimmery white eyeshadow at put it at the inner corner of your eye to brighten things up. I did that this morning and it made my red, puffy sleepy eyes look immediately more awake like the picture above. You can really see how how it really makes things look more open and alive. Pretty simple, right?

 BLACK

Here is an all black smokey eye. This is a really gorgeous look that I used to do almost daily for awhile. She used white or a beige color below her eyebrow to make that area clean and defined. She used black to almost color block her brown eyes so that the brown is the focal point. If you compare this picture to the picture above you immediately notice that your eye is drawn to the WHITE. Here it's her eye, above it the eyeshadow. 

BLACK AND WHITE

Here, this lovely lady used both black and white to create a radiant look of light to dark. Notice how the black defines the corner of the lid while the white brightens up the corner of the tear duct. VOILA! Isn't makeup awesome??

Another example of light versus dark is on the lip!

Lots of woman want bigger or fuller looking lips. Here is a simple trick to achieve it. After applying your lip gloss or lipstick, use a cream highlighter or white, shimmery eyeshadow in your Cupid's bow (the triangular space on the top of your lip) right above the lips and a the same highlighter on the middle section of your lower lip. You can't tell in the picture at first glace but notice how it makes her lips look fuller? This is the trick a lot of people are using. She probably has some highlighter on her nose come to think of it! :)

This brings me to contouring. We use lights and darks to contour parts of our face. On our cheeks you can use highlighter above your cheek bone and then bronzer below it to create this beautiful illusion seen below.

I even found some pictures of how they contour the face using makeup to create light and dark spaces to define and illuminate the face in the right places.

Notice how the dark colors stay around the outside of the face to keep that area defined and the light colors stay on the inside of the face to make certain parts appear clean and bright? This is such an awesome technique and a great cheat sheet to keep. 

I hope this blog helped you to learn more as to how to play with light and dark colors on your face.

Thanks for reading!