At right, light makeup without any contouring.
At left, the model’s eyes and cheeks are sculpted with taupe powder and pale gold highlighter.

While flipping through Allure, one of my favorite beauty magazines, I came across an article on how contouring has taken on a much more fresh-faced approach in contrast to its 1980s predecessor (can anyone here really fathom wearing Dynasty makeup any day other than Halloween?).

The good thing about this subtle approach is that it only takes three products to achieve it: a matte shadow, a matte blush, and a highlighter. “Darker colors recede; highlighter makes an area more prominent,” says makeup artist Troy Surratt. The counter colors should be no more than two shades darker than your skin tone and not too red or orange (so skip most bronzers). The highlighter should be “almost the color of your skin, with just a hint of shine,” says makeup artist Polly Osmond.

EYES:

Smoky shadow may have the ability to instantly take you from day to night, but contoured eye makeup has its own superpowers: “Contouring creates the illusion of beautifully defined, deep-set eyes” without looking like you have on gobs of makeup, says makeup artist Diane Kendal. Using a fluffy eye shadow brush, apply a contouring powder or a brown shadow to the crease of the eye, just beneath the socket bone, being careful not to extend it too far. “Using colors that are too bright or winging it out past the eye looks unnatural,” says Osmond, who suggests then adding highlighter to the inner corners of the eyes to make them look larger and keep the overall effect from becoming too dark. And to avoid looking dated, wear only a pale champagne shadow on the lids, a thin strip of black liner, or nothing else at all.

CHEEKS:

A little shading can slim your face and give you the cheekbones you’ve always wished you had inherited. But keep it subtle or risk entering Grace Jones territory. Take a large, fluffy angled brush (densly packed bristles will deposit too much color), run it over the contouring powder, and tap off the excess. Next, suck in your cheeks (“It sounds so old-school, but it’s the best way to find the hollows,” says Suratt). Working from the tops of the hollows inward, shade along–and just beneath–the sunken area, stopping about an inch from the corner of your mouth, then blend well. Finally, starting under the outer edge of the eyes, Kendal dots highlighter on the cheekbones “to emphasize their height.” Blush is optional, but if you do wear it, go with a soft pink applied just to the apples of the cheeks. Adding bright blush would give you that retro stripe,” says Surratt.

Here’s some more flicks of the article, which can be found in the January ’09 issue of Allure Magazine: