How to hack contouring - total noob, help please

• You need your normal foundation, the same shade as your own skin, plus two sticks, one slightly lighter and one slightly darker.
• Trace the darker one along your cheekbones, your temples, your outer jaw line, and a little along the sides of your nose and on both sides of your skin.
• Blend, baby!
• Use the lighter shade for just under your eyes, on the bridge of your nose, and on your forehead if you fancy.
• Blend!

Don't expect this to work out right away. You may look like a monster. That's OK. Keep on practicing and you will get there in the end. When you do, finish the rest of your makeup off as you normally would!

The above is a good first guide but hacking contouring ain't nearly as easy as it looks. For me personally, yeah, a visual representation of what it is you are supposed to do really helps. Of course there is different face shapes and all that, but start by looking at a bunch of YouTube videos and then replicating them in your bathroom, really. You should hopefully get better with each try, which does depend on your inherent talent, but really there's no way to learn it other than just doing it and in the end, you will either figure it out or decide it is too much work for you.

Can I share my honest but unpopular opinion? Contouring used to be one of those things only used at photoshoots, and in my opinion that is how it should be again! Not everyone needs to create the illusion of perfectly angular faces with strong jaw bones and sharp cheekbones. For most of us, we are better off looking the way we naturally look with only the benefit of "regular" makeup that does not aim to change the face shape. We should not all look like clones or even try to.

Right. If you don't like contouring, there's a fairly simple solution to that: don't do it. Over here, we were discussing how to hack it, for those who do want to learn to do it. If you had said that you don't use it because you can't get it to look great, that'd be one thing, but why come here and share that you don't like it? Especially the suggestion that people who use contouring are trying to look like clones is actually quite insulting.

Ok, back to your regular programing now...

On point, sister, but there you have it. I own a contouring kit and I'm not very, shall we say, artful with it! Some days I manage to pull it off and look better than I do myself, other days I create the opposite effect of what I had intended and have to take it all off and start again, usually without the contouring. It looks so easy, and yes, of course I have watched tutes, but executing contouring well is a different matter entirely. It seems like you need to be a makeup artist or at least pretty gifted to do a good job with this!

I usually use either the Makeup Forever Sculpting Kit or Tom Ford Shade & Illuminate for contouring. You can just use three shade, the foundation, then a contour and a highlighter, which already makes for awesome effects. All you want to do to start with is define the natural hollows of your face a little more, give your cheek bones and chin a little more definition. Then once you can do that you can watch YouTube for more advanced techniques. Nobody masters this in a day but you can use beginners techniques quite successfully.