Animals On Faces — #animalsIDIC Facepainting Gallery

May13

#AnimalsOnFaces #animalsIDIC — Approaching the face as a canvas and placing an image of the animal onto the face using the inherent shapes of the face. In creating designs to use the curved, living canvas that is a face, I start with exploring where can I place the key element(s) of the animal to create a design that fits the shapes of the face I’m painting and/or allows the wearer to animate the design by using their eyes or mouth. Years of turning people into animals at the Bronx Zoo gave me lots of opportunity to experiment with creating a variety of different faces for the same animal: moving animal images around the face to see where they fit; changing the scale of the images; applying different artistic styles; thinking about creating scenic designs, paintings and graphic images rather than mask-like faces. I’ve collected examples from the past couple decades, starting with my favorites in the top block.

: Rhino

: Tiger Leaping Up

: Tiger Gets Loose

: Horse Falling Leaves

: Frog Mouth

: Crocodile Descending

: Crocodile Mouth

: Dragon Fire

: Lemur (Other Eye)

: Bird (Other Eye)

: Flock of Birds

: Flock of Geese

: Eagle

: Hawk Mask

: Fish Nose

: Magic Goldfish

: Fish Mouth

: 2 Flamingos

: Giraffe Loosing Spots

: Giraffe Pop

: Baby Gorilla

: Festival Elephant

: Lizard Nose

: The Two Lizards

: Night Heron

: Nile Crocodile

: Nuba – Ostriches

: Gazelle Looking Back

: Octopus

: Parrot Sunset

: Pelican Diving

: Pollination

: Rhino

: Shark and Swimmer

: Shark and Swimmer

: Snake Mouth

: Snake Mouth

: Snake Priestess

: Snow Leopard

: Cheetah Sun

: Squirrel

: Stegosaurus

: Large Tiger

: Tiger Gets Loose

: Pegasus

: Horse Spirit Mask

: Sea Turtle

: Turtle Smile

: The Earth Turtle

: Evolution

: Zebra Gets Loose

: Zebra Nose

Combinations

Multiple images of animals. Taking a graphic approach in the first examples to confuse the perception of the underlying face and create illusions.

Examples from Transformations

For my book, Transformations, I drew on years of events at the Bronx Zoo , including special thematic weekends such as Spots and Stripes, or Hidden Animals, that I could use to develop new designs. Working as teams of artists at those public events in which we’d paint hundreds of people, I saw the value in developing a wide range of design techniques, to create different faces for each participant so that each face remained interesting in a crowd of painted faces, and each person painted had their own unique experience. Photos mostly from 2000-2006, a few are older:

Additional Designs

Up through 2016. I’ll be posting a separate Gallery of Animals On Faces 2017 as the photos start coming in.

Learn more all we do at: agostinoarts.com

Christopher Agostino’s Anniversary Gallery: 40 Years of #FunOnFaces
Henri Matisse The Cut-Outs — Transformations Gallery
Transformations Facepainting — about the company

Animal Surprises at the Bronx Zoo — Facepainting Gallery

Jun8

We had a team of 6 artists at the Bronx Zoo for a company’s family outing this past weekend, which gave me a chance to do some more specifically animal and nature themed facepainting then I get to do on most of my gigs these days. Although at our zoo facepainting concessions we post a list of about 40 animals for people to choose from (just a list — no photos), at our special events there we prefer to be more adventurous by surprising people with the animal we turn them in to. We ask each participant if they want to be “nice” or “spooky” and then surprise them with the transformation. Here and some of the faces I painted myself over the 4 hour event. (You can click on the photos to see the names I give the face designs.)

Elephant Face Painting Gallery — Run for the Wild at the Bronx Zoo 2013

Apr22

It’s Earth Day today, and a beautiful morning. We are getting ready for this spring’s Run for the Wild at the Bronx Zoo on April 26, an annual family event in which runners gather early in the morning at the zoo to run and raise funds for all the work that the Wildlife Conservation Society does to preserve the environment around the world. The facepainting will be free for participants in this event, from 7:00 – 9:30 am. The annual Run for the Wild events are great fun and a unique way to enjoy the zoo while helping wildlife. Please come and enjoy a wonderful morning at the zoo!

Each year the Run for the Wild features an iconic animal as “poster child”, and this is the second year to feature the elephant. Elephant populations are currently under direct threat from poaching (65% of the African Forest Elephant population have been killed between 2005 and 2012), and the WCS and other organizations are pushing to protect them both by their efforts in the field and by working to enact laws to ban ivory trading. Learn more: 96 Elephants: A Killing at the Bai

Here are some photos of faces from the 2013 Run for the Wild.