Video: How to Define Cheekbones

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About the Expert

Taylor Babaian

Taylor Babaian is a celebrity makeup artist.

Transcript

Hi, my name is Talor Babaian. I'm a celebrity makeup artist and today I'm going to show you how to define your cheekbones. So to define Bianca's cheekbones, I'm going to apply a foundation, add a contour color using a foundation that's a couple shades darker than Bianca's skin tone to get that sculpted look, then I'm going to pop it with a little bit of color using some blush to make sure it still stays pretty. For the blush, I'm going to use L'Oreal Paris True Match Super Blendable Blush. So I'm going to start my look to sculpt Bianca's face using foundation and this is going to be the normal foundation that you use every day, just something that matches your skin. You're just going to apply the foundation in a downward motion. Your hairs grow down that way and it's just going to give you a smoother finish. I'm using a brush, you can use your fingers, you can use a sponge. However, when you're actually doing the contouring, I don't recommend using your fingers because what it will do is it will give you more of a blotchy finish and it won't give you the precision and naturalness that you need. So now that we've applied Bianca's first layer of foundation and evened out her skin tone, we're ready for the contour foundation. So I've actually chosen a color that's four shades darker than her natural skin tone. The darker it is, it's actually four levels higher than her skin tone and that's going to give you more contour. If you want less contour, less sculpted look, but you just want a little bit of sculpting you can choose a foundation that's two shades darker than her natural skin tone. So first I'm just going to apply this down her cheekbone and then work it up. So basically work it into the skin and kind of blend it upwards. So to choose where you're going to apply this first initial line, you want to really feel for where under your cheekbone, the hollowness, so a lot of people like to suck in. You can suck in, so right in here, whatever indent that you get from that, that's where you want to apply the line and then you want to work it up. Now this does a couple of things. It's going to give you that lovely cheekbone, really thin out the face but it also gives you kind of like a nice tan look as well. One thing that happens when you apply your foundation, you naturally have different skin tones on the skin, you know a little sun here, it's a little darker up in here, a little darker in here but when you apply your first foundation it actually just takes all that away and it actually flattens your face and even sometimes foundation can make it rounder looking. So that's why contour I feel like is just so necessary. It's a step that I always do with any of my makeup applications. So now we've really structured and you can see her face has gotten much thinner. Her cheekbones are much more defined. So blush is absolutely essential when you're defining your cheekbones. It really just pops the cheekbones and it also makes it just look prettier and that's what we want. We want everything to look nice and pretty. So I'm just going to angle it starting from here at the temple and work it down. Now we're not going to go on where we already applied our darkest contour. We want to apply it just above it, just to kind of highlight the contour areas. So you've got the contour, you've got the highlight using the blush on top of it. So what we're doing is when we're applying blush you're going with the same angle of the cheekbone and it's really just going to narrow the face. So when you have a tall forehead, you're going to darken around the forehead, fairly low actually and what that's going to do is going to really condense the forehead and then you only want to pop the highlight just in the center right in there. The highlight is going to bring everything forward and so you don't want to take the highlight any farther than just slightly above the eyebrows when you move it a little bit higher it's actually going to lengthen and we don't want to do that. So we finished contouring Bianca and you can see that it's actually more of an exaggerated contour. You can definitely make this look a little bit more natural. You can blend it out a little bit more. You can also just use shades that are a couple shades lighter. This look is actually perfect for if you're going to do something for an evening out, add a smoky eye. It's great if you have more of a tan body and you want something that is going to go with a tan and really minimize and angle the face. So there you have it. That's how you define cheekbones. I'm Taylor Babaian. Thanks for watching.