Please take a look of the picture below
I set the outline color to red. You can see that it's not working. I just see a small red square at middle left side only.
Right click on the "c" and "convert to curves". Left click the "c" and at the top of the screen is a pen symbol called "outline width" which is probably currently set to "none". Change it to "hairline" and now create your contour. Once you're done you can click on the "c" again and change hairline back to none.