My Cheek Art is Weak Art

Sorry I had to rhyme I couldn't help myself lol
But seriously (well as serious as i can be)....I recently lost my mind and submitted a form for my first fair (a local old home days) and I want to practice my cheek art just in case I get a lot of people who are anti-masks and full faces and I was just wondering what your most common requests for little bits are. I started making up a list today and then I looked at it again and thought to myself "Self! No one wants that stuff! except maybe the butterflies and hearts"
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Much love

I love your rhyme. I'm in the same situation. I love to do full and half faces, except for rainbows, butterflies, spiders and the more common requests. I usually end up talking them into the half or full faces. The problem is I usually do a flea market, (I'm trying to get faster and this gives me practice, while I try and get the nerve for parties) and I really need a few quick designs.
Cheek art takes me as long as half a face sometimes. I did find a cute dog recently, with those pouncers. Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t95BaMvphNk[/url]

I hope I did that right, its my first time

That puppy is cute! Thanks for the link it seems like forever since i've watched any of clash's videos.

I'm so nervous about the fairs. I've only ever done parties so i'm all freaked out and my friends keep telling me it'll be fine but I keep having this vision of me sitting alone in my both and no one wanting to be painted lol

That won't happen Mizz sitting alone in your booth. As soon as one gets painted you'll get more rolling in. I liken face painting to hot chips everyone wants them & everyone will line up for them..heehee good luck you'll do great.

rainbows with either hearts, flowers, swirls & curls, clouds stars, a unicorn, dolphin.
spider & web, skull & crossbones, frog, shark, dinasaur, beaten up look (black eye & grazes), snake, football with flames mmm that about all I can think of for now. Hope some of these help you.

Thanks Mandi I feel a bit better now especially since a lot ofthat was on the list I came up with I guess I'm just freaking myself out. Getting all worked up over nothing like one of my kids haha

I hate doing cheek art. It takes me just as long, and people want to pay less for it, so I don't do it unless they are under three, I reserve the butterfly brush and a small snake for the tiny ones.

I don't do cheek art, either, for the same reasons. It is too time-consuming and feels restrictive to me somehow as an artist. For non-face painting I will offer a fast artybrush snake up the arm for boys and a super fast artybrush rainbow bracelet for girls.

I'll paint cheekart if I have too, but really don't like it. It's just small on small faces that wiggle. I try to do things with round pouncers so it's easier to not mess up.

don't sweat it! Just keep a few small designs for just in case. To be honest though, after seeing one of your marvelous full faces, most people will want that- not the cheek art. Bet ya.

I'm hoping that's what will happen. Not only do I not like doing cheek art but it's also not as much money and I'm doing this fair to make money after all. I know I should push myself to do the things I don't like to do to get better but I do that when I'm practicing...I don't want to do it when I'm trying to get through a line lol

butterflies (get a butterfly brush), unicorns, flowers, hearts, snakes, sharks and I recently added a little rocket ship which is just some triangles and circles... I have a monkey, but I don't actually like it when people ask for it because it does take a long time to do. If you can do princess crowns on their foreheads, that solves a lot of those problems though.

Thanks Perry

I made a butterfly brush last year but I don't think I was using it right lol my butterflies looked all a mess every time I tried to use it

it's just for laying down the colour, it will be messy, then you outline it with a little brush and put a couple antennae... done!

That's what i thought. i think i just got all carried away when i first started trying to use it and got all blobby lol i think i'm going to bust it out again tonight and try it. i haven't touched it in like a year.

I always have that one parent.."Can't you just put something small on the cheek for a dollar" haha...I wanna say..." No I can't for a dollar, but 10 will do it"

Eva that's awesome lol by the time i'm done with a piece of freaking cheek art, i've put so much effort into it i feel like it should be hanging in the Louvre hahaha

At the festival that we do every October, we started offering "Scarecrow Festival Special" cheek art for half the price: very very simple designs - a pumpkin or a spider and web, not fancy at all. Those were the only choices for the reduced cost.

This worked great because our lines got very long and some people just want something small, quick and cheap. And that's how I got back into face painting actually, my daughter would do the full faces and I started doing the cheek art, to get the lines moving faster.

Now, I am working up a sheet of choices of cheek art for other festivals and my plan is that those are the ONLY cheek art designs I will do, and I'm planning to offer them for $2 less than regular designs. My main criteria is that I can do them FAST!

One cheek design that is surprisingly fast but looks fantastic is the sunset with black palm trees and a bird. I use a pouncer with a rainbow cake for the sunset and it is easy peasy.

Isabelle great idea with the pouncer and the sunset.

I made up a few designs I knew that I could do quickly... these were the only cheap designs offered, anything else comes under my full price. There are other things I know I can do quickly but I like to keep them full priced and use them to speed up the line. Things like unicorns, rainbow, eye flower, princess crown, dinosaur, shark, dolphin.....

Here is my super quick design sheet..

Daisy those are lovely! Everytime i try to do a swirly tear dropy design like your pink one, it ends up a hot mess lol i either go overboard or on't do enough for fear of going overboard.

Thanks so much everyone! Ya'll rock! I have a list of things to practice now...now if i could just hear back from one of these fairs

Daisy,
Your cheek art is ART. Beautiful.

I think that a lot of the problem with cheek art is that people expect to get a picture painted on their cheek. Because it is small, they think it has less value without thinking about how intricate or involved it may be. And frankly, I can't draw very well so that is not an option I want to offer. I hear this a lot, "Can you just draw a tiger on his cheek?" Um, no. I couldn't draw a tiger that you would want anyone to see, trust me. But my full face tiger is awesome!

So I've stopped calling it cheek art - my sign now says "large" or "small" design. My small designs are like Daizy's - they are fast to do and do not cover much of the face, and they do not really involve drawing a picture. (Mine are not as lovely though, I have not half the talent she does!)

The sunset design is the closest I have to drawing a picture - but it's not hard to do and looks impressive thanks to the rainbow cake! Sorry the linework in this pic is not so great, but you get the idea.

Isabelle, that sunset with palm trees is great! I started out doing mainly cheek art and one of the things I do is a one-stroke palm tree with sand, water, etc. But with a small face, it just turns out, well, SMALL! Yours is a great idea for that small face and it looks so fancy. Thanks for sharing. I think I have a pouncer somewhere...

I am not a cheek art fan myself, but I would recommend the 3 Minute Cheek Art book by Roberta Mandella. Although the designs are pretty basic, there is a lot you could do with glitter or gems to jazz them up.

It has over 26 designs shown step-by-step and over 150 designs samples shown in 56 pages. Brush stroke tutorial, how to get the correct paint consistency guidance and the science behind the perfect tear drop.

I sell out all the time including right now since my shipping manager took the last one to practice for her first solo gig. These should be back in
Tuesday as they shipped yesterday.

The problem I ran into were the "request" cheek art. Like others have said, it takes too long for the money. I'm charging by time. I want to make at least a dollar a minute. If a cheek art takes longer than 2 mins or so I'm cooked.

I think I'm adding a "request surcharge" of $2.00 to match a picture or design...I will assume that they'll change their minds and just get a $5.00 half face design rather than pay for a $5.00 cheek art.

I had requests for Mutant Turtle (off a t-shirt), Boston Red Sox Logo (off a hat), Batman Logo (from hand-drawn picture), ice cream cone (had to wipe it off and start again because it wasn't exactly right)...etc. All of them took too long for the price. One exception was uni-brows and mustaches, all different styles, on some pretty girls (what's up with that?). I only charged them $2.00 and told them they should have a real party so I can make them pretty. They loved them though...except one girl who I'm sure would have loved some blossoms (peer pressure!)

Maybe we as a group should start calling them "mini masterpieces" instead of cheek art and charge $8.00.

D.