Face painting

Whether it is at a party or at your own home for fun, face painting can be a great way to express yourself and be a kid again getting messy.

I'm not an experienced face painter and have learnt all I know from looking in books or on the internet and basic trial and error, mainly the latter, I have done face painting on the odd occassion at party's or school fetes and found like with most things the more you practice the better and more extravogant you can get with your designs. I would suggest finding something simple to start off with like a tiger, this may look complicated in the pictures but it is a very easy one to do and has the basic structure for any animal face paint design. You don't have to copy them exactly and can add your own details to it, I used to practice on my two daughters at home to get me a bit more confident with some of the harder ones, face painting isn't difficult but I do feel you need some artistic flair to be able to enjoy it .

EQUIPMENT

Before you start set up everything that you need, here is a basic list.

Small face sponges (make up triangles are the best)

Thin artists painbrush(always better to get a decent quality one)

Paints

Water

Face glitter/dust

Face painting designs

Mirror (for showing the children afterwards)

Aliceband (for keeping hair off of face)

BASE COAT

The base coat is the foundation and most important part of your face painting , it sets the background for the design, with the tiger one or any other animal one start with the main colour of the creature, so for this example we will say yellow for the tiger.

Dampen your sponge and wipe it into the facepaint, dab a bit on your hand to get rid of an excess paint.

Gently pat the sponge all over the face with the yellow paint making it slightly lighter at the edges of the face and darker in the centre.

Clean this sponge or use another one to use the colour orange with , pat this around the edges of the face blending it in with the yellow the further in you get, I normally go back over with the yellow in the middle to blend out with the orange nice and evenly.

Take some white paint on a sponge and cover the eye area and the mouth area and blend that in with the the yellow and orange that is  already on the face, when you are happy with your base coat it is time for the next stage

STAGE TWO

The next part is all brush work

Take your paintbrush , dampen it and then load it with black paint, don't over load it or the lines will be too thick and blobby.

You need to paint in some eyebrows but make them higher than the the natural brow take your time with this and don't worry if they don't look identicle, Next you can paint the nose with black,add a little white dot to make the nose look like it is shiny, after the nose is painted you need to do the part between the nose and the lips it is basically a thick black line from under the middle of the nose down to the midde of the top lip.

Too neaten up the white around the mouth and eye's you can go over it with white on a paintbrush, not a neccessity bit it does look more professional.

Once the white is dry you can add the whiskers, make some dots on each side of the mouth with black paint and draw some whickers off of them , they don't have to be neat, I find painting them with quick  short flicky strokes makes them look more natural than taking ages trying to get a straight line.

Finally using black on a paintbrush paint on shorts lines around the face for a fur look , add red as well and some white, it all adds to the effect.

I have put some pictures on of my children with some of the face painting i have done , although I gave you the stages of doing a tigers face it is pretty much the same with any animal.

If a child doesn't want their whole face painted you can paint flowers, or ladybirds or anything they want really, as long as you feel you are capable of doing such designs, I found it easier copying from pictures whilst painting the animal faces when I first started out, I still do use pictures as guidlines, but for the ones like butterflies and such you can create them yourself and make them individual to that child i.e colours and patterns, also adding some face glitter / dust looks great and all adds to the effect.

Happy Facepainting!