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.
Celebration faces
Gymnastics Camp
Horses in Snow
Godzilla attacks
NYC Parks events…
Hi-Line Halloween
Guest star
Face by Miguel
Lizard Nose
Metro PCS Alien
Free Arts events…
Smile faces…
NYC Rainbow
Modigliani at…
The Jewish Museum
Modigliani
Modigliani
Modigliani
Zakanitch exhibit at…
HudsonRiver Museum
O’keeffe
Monet
Klee
Cezanne
Picasso
StoryFaces at…
Tampa-Hillsborough
… Festival
Jackson,MI StoryFest
Clemens Center
School Shows
“The Storyteller…
…and the Magic Fish”
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.
Aliens…
Chased by…
…Zombie Brother
Cat On His Mind
Chased by Dinosaurs
Chef
Clown Mouth
Dream Dancer
Dental conference…
Happy Teeth
Alien Warrior
Super Me!
Eagle NYC
Dragon
Eaten by Dragon
Eaten by Dragon
Eaten By Dragon
Eaten By Frog
Mouth Monster
Giraffes…
Cheetahs
4th of July NYC
Tropical…
Fish
Rainbow Macaws
Hummingbird
Polar Bears
Red Riding Hood
Floating Skull
Moon Goddess
Riding Pegasus
Florals…
Snake Stripes
Snow Leopard
Turtle
Vampires…
Zombies…
Abominable Snowman
Santas…
New Year Spirit Mask: the final face I painted in 2017
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.
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.
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.