Help me with a personal challenge?...

Hi all!

I am preparing for my first big gig in about 3 months- a home and garden show in which I will be face painting for 11 hours in a special children-friendly branch- and as I was getting my materials gathered, I thought to myself, " I wish I could just create a whole slew of faces and try new techniques that I have never attempted before. (I am by no means an expert, my grandparents have been facepainting for close to 10 years, and they took my under their wing last march after becoming super busy!).

Because of my display set-up, I am able to switch out my images/prices according to the event I am at- and I would like to expand my gallery while also honing my face painting skills and learning how everyone makes such amazing faces (that I only wish I could do right now-but I am hoping that will change!).

SO I ask the community to rally with me and list any faces that are your favorite, like faces you would like to see, color combos that you would like to see used, and any other ideas that I could take and create/use...

I have found face painting to be so rewarding, and because I have always been into artistic and creative things- I would LOVE to take input from all of you and create new faces for us all to use!! (as I will post and work that comes of this project in my public gallery for all to use!)

I will wrap things up by saying, "CHALLENGE ME!!!"

Best Regards,

Risa Joy

Well... if you are slammed you really want to be doing what you know and what is easy.

And what the kids ask for is going to be THE USUAL no matter what you put up... you have to know that already!

My most popular designs with the boys are skulls - I have three versions in my display: Normal, Mutant, and Red Skull of Death. The older boys pick the mutant and red skull, the little ones the regular skull. I also have a Zombie that is half a skull with lots of blood that is quite popular too.

The little girls like my brow Unicorn (step-by-step for this in on my resources page) and the Rainbow cheek Unicorn.

What I paint to challenge myself is different than what I put out on the job... once I get a new idea, paint it, work on refining it for speed I may put it out on the display, but not always.

When I get really bored with a designs or find that it isn't working for me for some reason - taking too long or it isn't easy to pump out fast enough, I will pull it from the display and maybe try redesigning it to make it faster and easier to paint.

It isn't really about NEW stuff it is about applying your style to the same things everyone else paints as there really isn't much that hasn't been tried before IYKWIM?

I have lots of photos of my "original" stuff on my website... some of the photos are NOT in my displays as they either are never asked for or not necessarily something that would appeal to my usual customers!

Thanks for the advice! I never thought of refining previous designs to show off my personal style- GREAT idea... I will definitly being focusing on this more!

you're pretty much going to get requests for the same stuff as always....

skulls, princess, butterfly, puppy, cat, spiderman, unicorn, flowers.... the usual. What I would do in your situation is to try and make every face different in some way.

The kid asks for a puppy face, so you could ask, 'would you like to be a rainbow puppy?' and then do that.. just change it up for each kid. A heart puppy, princess puppy, st. paddy's day puppy, tribal puppy, mean puppy, happy puppy, sad puppy, so on so forth...

if you're really busy, then don't try to pull a new masterpiece out of your bum for each kid... you're just gonna slow yourself and the line down and piss the parents off.

good luck and have fun

I've been trying to work on color theory while I'm working on kids... I should probably get a small color wheel to help. But... in picking the colors for the designs and selecting what goes with what to look good. I've only been doing complimentary colors lately, and I've noticed it helping.