At my daughter’s first birthday party, I was fortunate enough to have a cousin who is an artist and she whipped out her face painting kit and paint the older kid’s faces and whole upper torsos. My nephews were completely done as the Hulk and Aquaman, the girls had their faces painted up as princesses and small cute butterflies and balloons.
Kids love face painting, they are fascinated by entertainment seeing others get their faces painted and wait in anticipation to see their face design. My daughter’s fifth birthday is approaching and I was desperately, wanting a crash course on how to do it myself, so that I wouldn’t have to hire a face painting artist to do my party.
The key is to start with easy face painting designs. The face designs should easy enough to be able to use small sponges cut into circles, triangles, rectangles, diamonds, dab them into the face paint and place it on the skin, leaving a base design that you can build upon or finish off with a little highlight, lowlight, or shading. Use a different sponge for each color; you will need multiple sponges in the same designs for each of the colors you are using.
A great time to practice face painting designs is at Halloween. On a night of horrors, the little odd wavering of a line will be hidden in the dark of trick or treat. If you are unsure of your ability practice on your own hand, close your hand into a fist and paint the top of it. Halloween is the most popular time of the year for face painting. The face painting design include, vampires, ghouls, witches, and ghosts.
Face painting ideas should be simple, fun, and something you have practiced. The more you practice the faster you become and the more faces you can paint.
Face painting design supplies should consist of good paintbrushes. Good paintbrushes will have the bristles securely fastened into the brush end, otherwise, the bristles will fall out and become part of the face painting design. You will spend several minutes pulling bristles out of the design. Good brushes cost between $3-10, and they will last you a long time. Invest in sponges and cut them into different designs like circles, stars, triangles, rectangles, ovals, and any other shape you can imagine. Remember to disinfect all items between faces to keep things sanitary. All face paints should state on the labels that they are face paints and they are okay to use on the skin, start out with two or three paint brushes, and a small range of colors, the basic palettes have white, black, green, red, yellow, purple, and orange. Other fun items to use with the face paints are glitter, stick on gems, stencils, and face painting stamps.
Great items for amateur face painters are stencils and face painting stamps. The face painting stamps are made of rubber and you place in on your face painting paint pad and you have an outline of the design, then you fill in the stamp design with color.
Stencils are outlines of shapes; they are picture version of the ABC’s your child might use to learn to hold their pencils in nursery school. You mix and match the designs and use a base color and dab the small areas of the stencil or the entire stencil. Next, you put on the highlights and final touches. Hint, girls love glitter and body gems after all they are princesses!