The whole placement on one sheet. Seven sections: the keep-or-soften decision with both arms' steps, the four-corner map with stroke directions, the cheek and jaw stopping rules with their landmarks, the base and layer order, the three-court measuring table in millimetres and inches with the arithmetic, the failure checklist with each repair, and a log to fill in on the day. Print it or keep it on your phone.
Two sets of material are referred to below and neither is named here, only dated. The six are the six published placement guides for this face that carry a date, running from April 2019 to July 2026, listed oldest first in the article this sheet belongs to. The practice record is the first-attempt writing — people recording what failed on their own faces and what replaced it, between 2012 and 2025 — which is where most of the landmarks and every failure repair on this sheet come from, and which the six never cite. Where the two agree without contact, that is said.
This outline's corner is the only structural feature it has in surplus, and it can be kept or softened. One of the six names the choice; the other five assume the softening arm without saying so. Decide before the brush, because the jaw stroke's ending depends on the answer, and nothing about the corner itself changes either way — it is bone, and no quantity of pigment relocates a bone.
| Keep the corner | Soften the corner | |
|---|---|---|
| The jaw's light | A soft highlight stays on the back of the jawline — the corner keeps its edge and reads as structure. | The jaw's highlight is traded for contour shade — the corner loses its edge and reads as curve. |
| Where the jaw stroke ends | Swept back behind the ear. The corner stays; the edge gets clean. Stopping at the angle reads as a stripe. | Blended toward the earlobe and out, so no edge survives to stop at. |
| What the record adds | The practice record's arm. Its reasoning: on a face whose only surplus is structure, erasing the corner leaves nothing to replace it. | Five of the six published guides. Their word for the aim is soften; one mass-brand row softens the edges while keeping the strong structure, which is nearly the fork named. |
| The premise to reject | Whichever arm you pick, do not pick it because a sharp jaw angle is masculine bone on a feminine face. The measured literature says otherwise: women's corners average more obtuse than men's by about three degrees, and this outline's own angle sits within a degree of the measured female mean. | |
The most settled fact in seven-plus years of material: six dated guides, no contact between them, the same four points. Two high — where the hairline turns at the temples. Two low — the angles of the jaw. The motion is a diagonal or an arc, never a straight line tracing the corner, because a straight dark line beside a straight bone doubles the thing it was meant to soften. Between the corners runs the centre column: a slim vertical of light down the mid forehead, nose bridge and chin, kept narrow because a wide one widens the feature the corners are working on.
| Point | Where exactly | Motion | Depth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corners 1–2 (high) | The outer flanks of the forehead, starting where the hairline turns at the temples. | Diagonal, fading downward so the hairline stops reading as an edge. Never the centre or very top of the forehead. | A gradient, not a band. |
| Corners 3–4 (low) | The angles of the jaw, shading on the bone rather than above it. | Arc, feathered up and down; one direction only, never back and forth. Ends per section 1's decision. | Darkest at the outer contour, fading inward. |
| Centre column | Mid forehead, nose bridge, chin point. | A slim vertical; the forehead highlight occupies the lower two thirds of the forehead when the upper court runs long. | Matte at the corners' height; light only in the middle. |
| Rule | Where it comes from | What it means on the face |
|---|---|---|
| Start at the bone's highest point | Practice record — index finger on the highest point of the cheekbone, found by touch. | Not the hollow. Sucking in the cheeks finds a hollow that moves with expression; the finger finds the bone, which does not move. On this outline the hollow stroke subtracts volume the face has none to spare of, and reads as sunken and older. |
| Stop below the middle of the eyeball | Practice record. | Three stops for three stroke paths — a downward-angled stroke and a stroke running under the bone end in different places. What they agree on: none reaches the mouth, and all keep the stroke's end in the back half of the cheek. |
| Stop at the outside edge of the iris | Published, April 2020 — the typical stop for a stroke angled toward the lip line. | |
| Stop halfway from ear to mouth | Published, July 2026 — a stroke under the bone, fading out at mid-cheek, which keeps the lift. | |
| One direction, outside to inside | Both records — darker nearer the outer contour, the front of the face barely touched. | A reversing brush redeposits what it just laid. Small continuous strokes, built in passes. |
| The jaw is a surface, not a line | Both records — extend onto the neck; blend toward the earlobe. | A few heavy strokes on the line alone read as a line drawn on the face. One continuous shadow surface reads as the face's own underside. The neck wears makeup now, and the neck gets cleaned now. |
| The front-facing bone takes no powder | Practice record — the square-face exception. | Where the cheekbone faces the camera straight on, grey-brown powder reads as dirt. Use warmth — an orange-toned shadow — instead of contour there. |
Measure the face's length in three courts, hair pulled back: hairline (the real one) to brow start, brow start to nose base, nose base to chin tip. The even split is the total length divided by three. The long court decides which highlight gets the shortened stop: middle court long, the nose highlight stops 5 mm short of the tip; lower court long, the chin highlight stops 5 mm short of the chin's point.
| Face length | One court = length ÷ 3 | One court, inches | The 5 mm stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| 105 mm = 4.13 in | 35.00 mm | 1.38 in | 0.20 in |
| 110 mm = 4.33 in | 36.67 mm | 1.44 in | 0.20 in |
| 115 mm = 4.53 in | 38.33 mm | 1.51 in | 0.20 in |
| 120 mm = 4.72 in | 40.00 mm | 1.57 in | 0.20 in |
| 125 mm = 4.92 in | 41.67 mm | 1.64 in | 0.20 in |
| 130 mm = 5.12 in | 43.33 mm | 1.71 in | 0.20 in |
| 135 mm = 5.31 in | 45.00 mm | 1.77 in | 0.20 in |
| mm — yours |
Worked through at one length: a 120 mm face gives courts of 120 ÷ 3 = 40 mm, and 40 ÷ 25.4 = 1.5748, so each court is 1.57 in. The stop is the same for everyone: 5 ÷ 25.4 = 0.19685, so 0.20 in. The upper court's rule is a fraction rather than a distance and needs no conversion: when it runs long, the forehead highlight occupies the lower two thirds of the forehead's height and leaves the top third empty. Angles — the jaw's 127.9 degrees, the measured band — are degrees in every unit system and convert to nothing.
| What it looks like | What caused it | The repair |
|---|---|---|
| Stubble | Product laid on heavy and never blended; it piles in the pores. | Take it off. Restart with small amounts, many passes, built from the outside inward. Add product to the brush, never to the face. |
| Dirt on the front of the cheek | Contour powder on the part of the cheekbone that faces the camera straight on. | That zone takes no grey-brown. Warmth instead: an orange-toned shadow over the front-facing high point. |
| Sunken, older cheeks | The stroke placed in the hollow — usually copied from a face with different bones. | Find the bone's highest point with a finger and start there. Position over depth: the stroke does not need to be darker, it needs to be higher. |
| A line drawn on the jaw | Heavy strokes on the jawline alone; the shadow stops where the bone stops. | One surface: extend onto the neck, feather up and down, end per the section 1 decision — behind the ear, or toward the earlobe and out. |
| The face got bigger | The base is lighter than the neck, so the face separates from the body as its own surface. | Match the neck. Mix two foundations if one will not land. Only then does one-to-two shades deeper mean anything. |
| Every furrow announced | A dewy base on square bone: gloss declares its own topography. | Matte at the edges and where the corners are; controlled light only in the centre column. |
| White paint under the eyes | A stick highlighter in daylight; the format only behaves under a camera. | Liquid or finely-milled powder, pressed in with a damp sponge before the setting powder. |
One row per attempt, filled in on the day. The verdict column is written at arm's length in daylight — the distance other people stand at — not into a morning mirror and not from a photograph: cameras eat makeup, so a result that reads correct in a photo is often a result that is too heavy in daylight. Everything on this sheet washes off, so the third attempt costs exactly what the first one did; the log is what makes the third attempt informative.
| Date | Arm (keep / soften) | Products used | Where each stroke stopped | Verdict, at arm's length in daylight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Work one side of the face at a time: finish one side completely, look at the other side raw, then match the finished side to it rather than to any diagram — including this one. Both of the record's best findings came out of exactly that asymmetry: the behind-the-ear jaw sweep and the matte-versus-dewy result were each demonstrated one side against the other.