Some of the faces I painted recently on a select group of students who acted as the hosts of their school’s art show. They wore T-shirts that said “I Am A Living Masterpiece”.
Each face is an imitation of a specific painting, or a detail from a painting. It is always a remarkable learning experience for me to get to paint like this.
This is the only photo I have from the final gig of 2011, First Night in Hartford, CT. We were just too busy for taking photos. It was our first time at this event and we expected that with First Night falling on a Saturday and the weather so mild the place would be crowded. When we arrived the on-site staff warned us to brace for a long line. They were right. The moment they opened the doors we had a line filling the room we were in.
Facepainting for free at a well attended public event means the line will be an issue. We want to paint as many people as possible, we want to keep it all manageable so the people waiting aren’t getting annoyed and the client/venue remain happy. We had our sound system so we played music and I could occasionally talk to the crowd, tell them what to expect (that we would surprise everyone with the face we paint on them) and our two simple rules: we paint anyone over 3 (but no babies or toddlers) and we only paint full faces. We also had great help from the site staff, who managed the line so we could focus on the painting. A few hours into the event, the site manager came to me and said that line was so long they were going to tell the adults in line that they couldn’t get painted, so we could paint more kids. I told her that isn’t what we do, and I was glad that she was willing to discuss it with me. We feel that adults have as much right to be painted as kids, and we know how excited kids get when their parents join in—it makes it a memorable family experience. I suggested instead to place someone at the end of the line to tell people how long the wait was and let them make the choice to join the line or not. We wound up painting almost as many adults as kids, including some teens and adults that were there on their own without any kids to be painted. Facepainting is not just for kids. Once the line was closed it took us an hour to finish everyone waiting. I painted about 30 people in that hour. Towards the end people were thanking us for staying longer than scheduled and many were saying it was worth the wait. It felt good to work that hard, paint that fast and transform so many people. So we went out of 2011 with a bang, not a bad way to end a year.
Here’s the sign we used for this event. Click on this link, it will open in a window than click on it again: agostinoarts_WorkOfArtSurpriseSIGN
From our years of very large events at the Bronx Zoo we developed a methodology for painting faces quickly, focusing more on the graphic design than on the details. Even working as quickly as we did at Hartford, each face is unique, and a bold, colorful design that people respond to. For an idea on how to simplify a full face design to paint it more quickly, see the post on a fast tiger face: https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/2011/04/08/facepainting-how-to-paint-a-tiger-face/
"Zombie Attacke" painted at the Mill Neck Manor Fall Harvest Festival
This weekend offered more opportunities for creative adventures in facepainting, made even more fun by the wonderful Indian Summer weather here in New York. All of our outdoor events were packed with happy people. ‘Tis the season for facepainting, as we move past too hot summer weather and approach Halloween — the international holiday for celebrating transformation (haven’t you noticed that people are more willing to go wild in October?). My artists and I are collectively working on new ideas, egging each other on into new directions and working particularly on bringing more imagery onto the face, i.e. treating the face more like a canvas, and reaching further into other styles of art for inspiration. And, as we get increasingly enthusiastic about being more creative, we find an increasingly receptive public joining us in the adventure. All weekend long I heard people on line saying they thought it was cool and exciting that we would be surprising them with the faces we painted, with nary an indignant demand for a Spiderman face.
Here are faces from three events:
"Ballerina"
The 50th anniversary of the Mill Neck Manor Fall Harvest Festival (http://www.millneck.org/news/fall_festival/fall_festival.html) where we’ve painted for many years — at this event the organizers do charge people to have their faces painted, yet we still get to surprise them with our designs.
The Wildlife Conservation Society “Come Out of Your Shell” Run for the Wild at Coney Island’s Aquarium, raising funds to save turtles (http://e.wcs.org/site/PageNavigator/RFTW_AQ_homepage.html). Here we only painted variations on turtle designs on the adults and kids running the race.
The Parrish Art Museum Family Festival (http://www.parrishart.org/) in South Hampton. Whenever we paint at a museum we see it as an opportunity to present facepainting as an art. For this event our theme was “Art On Faces” as we were turning the participants into images from famous artists and paintings, while talking with them about the painting or about the artist and their style.
"Demon From Hell"
Two angels, from a William Blake painting
"Picasso Zombie"
from a Monet painting of Venice
Irises, from a painting by Van Gogh. This was the final face I painted at the Parrish Museum event, a nice way to end the weekend.
"Vampire Bite" - adapting an idea from cultural sources, the Jaguar or Serpent helmet mask designs from Aztec and Mayan examples
Impressionist Landscape - Sailboats from a Monet painting. I painted two sailboat landscapes (seascapes?) in succession, one this Monet image and the 2nd a Fauvist" style image from Andre Derain
Favist landscape, from Andre Derain's "The Red Sail"
from a foto of a Hawksbill turtle surrounded by fish, painted at the Run for the Wild in Coney Island
This was from a scene I remembered, snorkeling off of St.John many years ago I watched a sea turtle skimming along the turtle grass and occasionally rising up to gulp air at the surface. I tried to paint it in the way one sees things underwater, a little obscured and unclear.
We ended the painting at the Run for the Wild with this group of five young women. For this event, I was painting with Jennifer and Laura.
