Favorite Faces 2017 — Facepainting Gallery

January 11, 2017

#favoritefaces2017   #transformationsny

Starting here with some of my favorite playful faces of the year and examples from Art On Your Face events, followed by faces from StoryFaces performances at festivals, schools and libraries. Below is a second set of photos with more cartooning explorations, animal faces, Halloween and holiday faces.

 

During events I mostly take photos of faces related to designs and techniques I’m working on, so I’ll have records of multiple versions of faces like the “Eaten By…” ones to refer to as I develop them further. This year included continuing to play with putting a cartoon of someone onto their own face, like in the “Smile”  faces, plus cartoons of people as vampires and zombies. Our company project in 2017 was to create “Animals on Faces”, using the face as a canvas (rather than as a mask), like in the “3 Giraffes” or “Rainbow Macaw” faces. And throughout the year I worked to think more like a painter as I painted faces. Fueled by the artface explorations we do, I work to put what I learn from copying artists like Matisse and Modigliani into all the facepainting, to include qualities related to using the Aquacolor make-up more like a painter might: exploring surface effects, for example, like in the four “Alien” faces here.

Learn more about all we do at: agostinoarts.com

VIDEO: StoryFaces at Jackson Storyfest

Just returned from Jackson, MI where I took part in the 30th annual Jackson Storyfest, part of a herd of storytellers who were in area schools performing for over 15,000 students May 3-5, 2017.

Special thanks to Bart Hawley and his crew from JTV who came to film StoryFaces at Parkside — and who was  brave enough to be transformed himself for Punia and the King of the Sharks. On Friday night, I was the featured teller for an evening performance at a beautiful old theatre currently under renovation, the Michigan Theatre, and it is a rare pleasure for me to perform in such a classic theatre. My thanks also to Anthony and Steven at the theatre, who could not have been more welcoming.

40 Years of #FunOnFaces

My Anniversary Gallery of 2016

Christopher Agostino     updated 1/12/17 

2016 was my 40th year of painting faces, from a start as an apprentice with a theatre company painting volunteers as clowns for a bi-centennial parade in 1976, and it’s taken that long for me to begin to figure out how to really have some #funonfaces by incorporating cartooning and pictures of people on their own faces. The recent cartoon explorations have been driven by my need to add comedy to my StoryFaces performances (see  The Amazing Face Video ), and also to develop new design tools for creating theme-specific faces, which we do to keep the facepainting an adventure while giving clients a reason to hire us for interesting events (see galleries: Science On Your Face and Winter Olympics ). Here’s 2016 in faces, starting with a group of some of the more playful, #funonfaces ones, plus groups of new StoryFaces images, continuing explorations of  Art On Your Face and other types of faces. Fotos first, at the bottom some more text.

Learn more about StoryFaces and all we do at: agostinoarts.com

 

Faces from StoryFaces performances 2016:

Art On Your Face and other themes 2016:

This year included more fun on faces than usual, as I experiment with cartooning to make faces people can play with at events, and to animate faces in my StoryFaces shows. We surprise people with what we paint on them at events, usually just asking the participant if they want to be “nice or spooky” and then surprising them. To accommodate these kind of faces we are offering a new, third option of becoming funny-looking, and then put a cartoon of them on their face. We also had a few Art On Your Face events this year, including painting faces for a Red Grooms exhibit at the Hudson River Museum and at the Sculpture Center’s LIC Block Party, plus a number of circus themed promotional events.

The animation of the face designs is entering my new StoryFaces pieces also, both in the faces I paint on stage and in the performance style. I started the year working on “Monkey King, Yo!” for performance at the StoryCrossroads festival in Utah, and ended the year premiering a new story called “The Storyteller and the Magic Fish” in which I paint a picture of myself onto an audience volunteer.

Special thanks to the participant/victim who let me use his face for the general amusement of the crowd at First Night Morristown, to create the Happy New Year “FaceCard” ™ at our final gig of the year for the gallery’s final image.

See also galleries by theme:   Christopher’s Faces Gallery;   Christopher’s BodyPainting Gallery;  Art On Your Face — Gallery;  The Amazing Face GalleryDia De Los Muertos ; Science On Your Face ; Halloween 2015 ; Christmas in New York ;  Winter Olympics 2014

Learn more about StoryFaces and all we do at: agostinoarts.com