Two Types of Bear

Hello again!

Today I have another face painting post for you, and this one is about teddy bears. 

I remember when I had just started out face painting, I think it was my second event, and this little boy sat down and said he wanted to be a bear... You can imagine my face. I had no idea where to even begin, thankfully I managed to convince him to be spider-man instead.

That night when I got home, I looked online for 'bear face painting' and I was glad I had convinced him otherwise.

Now though I have two types of bear that I paint, a simple one for the wriggly kids who can't sit still longer than 2 minutes. And a harder one that covers the full face, but I will show you how it's done.

If you are going to use these designs at your next face painting event, don't forget to practice a little first. 

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First I will show you the simple bear. This one is very good for little kids who don't want full coverage and those wriggly kids who seem to have ants in their pants (like my mum used to say).

1. Using pink paint, draw a semicircle over each eyebrow. You can use a brush or a sponge, I tend to use a 1/2'' flat brush but you can use any you are comfortable with.

2. With brown paint, draw a thick line round each semicircle to create ears. Join the ears together by drawing a thick line between the two. Then drag flicks upwards into the forehead for a the hair and using a dye brush or you finger, blend the bottom down onto the nose. While you have brown on your brush, you can also do the muzzle now by filling in between the top lip and nose and rounding it off at each side, Try to take a little onto the nose at each side just so the nose doesn't look separate.

3. Outline the ears and hair in black making sure the hair ends in thin points. I tend to just do a flick between the brown and pink of the ears as it looks odd if you outline the whole pink section. Then from each eye, do 3 flicks starting with the largest at the top.

4. Now you can outline the muzzle in black, starting from the top lip, curve it round and end in a point near the nose. Draw a thin line down the center and paint a triangle on the nose. Paint in the top lip with the black and curve the center thing line out to join the lip. Don't forget your whisker dots on each side of the lip, just to fill in the empty space.

5. Now you can either leave it like this, or for a tattered teddy you can paint a patch. Simply paint a square on the cheek of whatever colour you would like, outline in black and paint little stitches from the square onto the cheek.

TaDa... One quick and easy teddy bear that is perfect for girls and boys of any age!

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Now the other bear. This one is full coverage of the face, so it takes longer and uses more paint. If you charge for your face painting skills, you may want to take this into consideration when pricing. 

1. Using either a white or a pale yellow, paint a circle around the mouth and nose to create the muzzle of the teddy bear. And draw a small semicircle at each side of the forehead for the inside of the ears.

2. With Brown face paint, create a large circle around the face connecting at each side of the muzzle and fill in. Make sure you match up to each of the ears otherwise they will be floating.

3. Outline the muzzle and paint the lips in black. You can extend the lips if you like to make it look more happy. Paint on a nose and draw a thin black down connecting it to the top lip and round off at bottom.

4.Next you need to outline the rest of the bear in black, making sure to go around the ears and also outlining the inside ear too. With a dry brush go back over these lines dragging some of the paint out away from the design for make it look like fur or fluff. This also softens the design a bit so its not so harsh.

5. Now for the finishing touches. Draw a line straight down the center of the nose connecting the top to the muzzle, then create little stitches down this line. Add some little hash marks around the face to mark it look a bit tattered and to fill in any empty area's. For little girls, you can add some eyelashes by doing some black flicks on the outside of each eye. 

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If you are going to use these designs at your next event, practice them first to help you memorize them and experiment with them.

I hope you have enjoyed this post as much as I have, and I please leave pictures in the comments section below if you do try them out. 

If you have any questions or requests, please leave a comment and I will try my best to reply.

Stay Inspired

Amy

xxx

Face Painting - Hygiene

Hello!

I have another post about face painting for you, and today its all about hygiene. When painting faces you have to make sure you keep your brushes and sponges clean as they will be touching lots of peoples skin during each event and you don't really want to be spreading germs around. So, today I will show you how I wash all of my supplies.

First I rinse all my brushes under running water just to get any excess paint off. Then I soak all of my brushes in hot water from the kettle with a little shampoo or body wash in, this kills any germs and it loosens any dried on paint. I make sure to put my brushes in the container first with the shampoo, then pour the water over them. You don't need a lot of water, just enough to cover the bristles and barrels of the brushes, especially if you have wooden brushes with paint on the handle section, the hot water can peel the paint off and they end up looking grubby and dirty. You can mix the brushes around a bit in the water but its not essential, I always tend to do it on brushes I have used dark colours on though, just to lighten the bristles again.

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While the brushes are soaking in the hot water, I use this time to clean my sponges. You can put them in the washing machine if you like, just make sure they are washed alone(unless it is with any towels you have used), and they are in a bag (like those ones you can buy for washing your delicate's). Also I tend to put a little shampoo on the sponges too before putting them in, I run them under the tap and get the shampoo foaming first. I don't tend to use washing powder or softener as some people are allergic to certain brands and I find its just not worth it. I don't want to be the cause of some kid turning bright red and itchy just because I used a sponge on their face. Just put it on a temperature of 40° or higher.

Another way to clean your sponges is just under warm running water. Squeeze your sponges under the tap to get any excess paint out first, then add a drop of shampoo or body wash and rub into the sponge. You want to get it foaming to get the paint out. Once you have all the shampoo foamed in the sponge, you need to squeeze it under the tap to get ALL of the shampoo out. Don't worry if your sponge still has some colour on it, you will find the face paints stain the sponge. To make sure they are clean I usually press the wet sponge onto a piece of kitchen roll, if the kitchen roll is left clean with no colour on, then the sponge is clean.

To dry your sponges, I squeeze them inside a piece of kitchen roll to get any excess water out, then just leave them sat on some dry kitchen roll and leave them to air dry is best.

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Now I tend to go back to my brushes, I take my brushes out of the hot water and run them under the tap together. Then I take each brush separately and run them under warm running water. I make sure to rub the bristles with my fingers to get any shampoo out and any paint that might still be in there (especially in thicker or larger brushes). Again I use kitchen roll to check they are clean and to get any excess water out.

I reshape my brushes while they are still damp on the kitchen roll. For round brushes, I roll the bristles to create the point of the brush again. And for flat brushes, I drag the brush down the kitchen roll gently. Then I just leave my brushes to air dry on kitchen roll with my sponges. 

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Now a lot of face painter's out there have different ways of cleaning their actual paints and split cakes, but I find the quickest and easiest way is to just wipe them with a baby wipe. It gets any other colours off that have mixed in during the day and it gets any brush marks off so leaves them looking clean and tidy. Just wipe them gently, you don't want to pick any paint up on the wipe, just the messy bits. And if you are cleaning split cakes, make sure you only wipe in one direction as you don't want to mix the colours. 


Always remember, you will get more customers if your supplies look clean and tidy! :)


Stay Inspired
Amy
xxx

5 Easy Face Painting designs

Hello again!

Face painting is a fun way to entertain the kids all year round. Whether its dress up day at school and you can't find a costume, or its summer holidays and they're complaining they're bored every 5 minutes (trust me, I know how it feels). It can be a saviour at Halloween and birthday parties, and you don't need to be an artist, you just need some imagination... and some face paints.

I wrote a blog post about starting out with face painting and all of the supplies you will need, but if you are just doing it to entertain the kids, you may just want to buy 3 - 5 colours depending on what designs you want to paint, I would definitely recommend black though, as black is used in almost every design out there to outline and add detail. 

If you want to read that post, the link is here:
http://libidascreations.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/thinking-of-face-painting.html

I have put together 5 easy designs for you to try out and give you some inspiration.

Clockwise from top left: Pirate, Elsa Crown, Spider web eye, Flowers and finally, a Tiger.

I know some of them look a bit complicated but they are all done using basic techniques. Here's how I did them...

Pirate: 

• Cover the whole forehead in with red, either with a sponge or a brush, doesn't really matter which. Add two little trail bits down one side to create the knot.
• Next draw an eye patch around one eye and fill in with black.
• Outline the bottom of the head scarf with black using a thin brush and draw a circle above your two trail pieces, this will create your knot and then outline the trails.
• Don't forget to add the strings from the eye patch leading up diagonally as if they are tucking under the head scarf.

Optional:

• Draw a thin red line on the cheek and draw little black lines over to look like stitches over a scar. 
• Then draw a mustache on the top lip.
• For extra effect, you can add black or white dots randomly to the head scarf to make it stand out a bit more.

Elsa Crown: (Frozen)

Try to keep this design as symmetrical as you can.

• First draw a blue diamond in the middle of the forehead.
• Using a yellow or a gold, paint a line curving down each side making sure to meet at top and bottom.
• Then from the bottom point, draw an arch over each eyebrow. 
• Add a curved point shape to each side of the center bit and triangles on both sides.

Optional:

• Using white paint, add some flicks with your brush, down from the center of the crown and from each eye.
• You could also try adding dots of different sizes randomly to the design to create some interest and make it look more detailed.

Spider Web Eye:

• Sponge on whatever background colour you would like, covering one eye completely. Extend the colour out towards the hairline, going up diagonally and out along the cheek.
• Let the base colour dry. Then add black lines down the outer edge of the face, all aiming towards the nose. Make sure to bring the top line down onto the top of the nose and the bottom line almost meeting the nose, and both ending in a thin point.
• Now just add curved lines between these to make it look like a spiderweb.

Optional:

• You could add a little spider to your design by doing two dots and flick 8 little legs out from them.

I know my spider in the picture looks rubbish, but my cat rubbed against my arm as I was doing it and I couldn't be bothered wiping it off and starting it again.

Flowers:

• First you need to paint the flowers. You do this by loading up your brush with whatever colour you want and placing the point on the skin. Now keeping the point of the brush in the center, push down outwards 5 times going round in a circle to create the petals. Should look like this...

• Don't forget about the dot in the middle to finish off each flower. You can do as many flowers as you like in as many different colours.
• Next, load your brush with green and add lines between the flowers to look like they are on a vine. try to make it curve a little to look more natural.
• Then with the green still, add some leaves onto the vine just like you did the flower petals but instead of doing 5 just do 1 for each leave.

Optional:

• You can add some dots in any colour randomly around flowers to create a bit more interest or try adding a bit of glitter for some sparkle.

Tiger:

• Sponge white onto both eyes, making sure to take the colour up above the eyebrow at an angle and end in points at either side of the forehead.
• Now sponge Orange between the white on the forehead, taking it down the nose and across under each eye going about half way down the cheek.
• Outline the white areas with thin black lines.
• Add a heart shape to the end of the nose in black.
• Then just add some lines from the outer edges aiming into the middle of the design to create the tiger stripes.

Optional:

• Add three little dots at each side of the top lip and three lines to represent the tigers whiskers.

So, I hope you have fun trying out these designs and feel free to experiment and change them to suit your style. 

Stay Inspired

Amy

xxx