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Halloween Face Painting — Halloween Night: NYC Parks and Recreation

Zombie Princess - this girl wanted to look spooky, and her friend was joking with her that she must be confused, because she was wearing princess jewelry, so I made her a Zombie Princess

After the weather-frustrated weekend I was very glad to finish up this Halloween painting faces in the type of situation I really enjoy, for lots of kids and adults at a New York City Parks Department Recreation Center, with enthusiastic kids who don’t often get the chance for facepainting and adults as likely to sit down as the kids, because they want to have fun too as they accompany their kids trick-or-treating. Just as we were starting to set up some kid in a costume came in to ask what we were doing and when I said we’d be painting faces he yelled out “great!” and ran out of the room to tell the others. And we had just enough of a crowd to keep us busy but not too busy to have to hurry the faces.

It being the actual Halloween night, most of the adults and many of the kids wanted to be spooky. I painted the Zombie Attack idea again, which is what I like to do with new ideas: repeat them several times in a row at different events to make them familiar enough that I can retain the concept in my repertoire. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I like to use Japanese and Asian theater make-up concepts for demons and vampires, particularly on women that want to look scary because these designs can still be exotic and attractive (rather than gory). The “Kabuki Demons” and “Chinese Opera Demon” are those kinds of faces, loosely inspired by traditional makeup designs.

Hope you had a wonderful Halloween!

Kabuki Demon 1

Kabuki Demon 2- she and Kabuki Demon 1 planned on going around together so i gave them related faces. The kids they were with were cute little princesses, one of whom was frightened to see her Mom look scary, so we talked a bit about how looking scary on Halloween is a way to get over being scared of spooky things.

Kabuki Demon 3

Chinese Opera Demon

Tropical Sunset - the type of design we call "personal classics" in our company lingo, meaning a design you do that you know always works

Moon and Stars

Pink Cat - yes, I do occasionally paint cat faces

Matisse Blue Dancer - simple designs like this show the beauty colors can have all on their own

Silver Swirls - she had silver eye makeup and didn't want me to mess with it, so I extended the concept in a decorative design

Zombie Attack, again

Zombie

This staff member wa sone of the last people I painted, as ebverything was starting to close down. He was talking to everyone about how he was going out to a big club Halloween party, and he was talking the whole time I painted him about wanting to be a homeless vampire zombie punk

Alien Demon 3 Eyes

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New Faces — Faces At Play: Face Painting images of Sports, Dance and Physical Activities

In my Transformations Facepainting company, we’ve set a goal for ourselves this year to match the way we paint faces to suit events with special themes, working to alter both the imagery we use and the style of the facepainting. It’s a way to be more supportive to the goals of these events and also a way to push ourselves into new directions. Earlier this October, we painted at the Summit Medical Group Sports and Healthy Living Fair ( http://www.summitmedicalgroup.com/about/ ), which is designed to get kids inspired to do sports and other physical activities to stay healthy. Jennifer, Britt and I decided we’d ask the kids and adults we painted about what physical activities they enjoy doing, what kind of active games they play outside or if they play any sports ‚ and then we’d turn their answer into their face design. It led to a lot of new, off-the-cuff designs. We had fun, we tried new things and learned from each other’s experiments, and we had people standing around to watch and see what new idea we’d come up with next — which is a large part of what we want to achieve with our approach to facepainting as a performance art, to make it as exciting to watch as to participate.

I was particularly taken by the work that Jennifer and Britt did. There’s a playfulness to the designs they painted that perfectly matched the “active play” concept of the Health Fair, and which seemed so appropriate to the kids we were painting. Whereas I was too concrete in my use of figures, both Britt and Jennifer let their figures bend and float on the face for a lyric, “childlike” effect — in the style of the illustrations of Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold ( www.faithringgold.com/ ), or the floating figures of a Chagall painting. Although the individual faces were quite beautiful, especially as they both use colors so well, the impact of this playful approach was best seen over the collective effect of the day’s faces, so I’ve put some of the fotos together as a slideshow.

a girl on monkey bars

Jennifer's "Swan Lake" - such a nice idea I tried it myself at my next event

One of the things I appreciate most about having a company of talented artists is the inspiration I gain working beside them. Britt painted this girl jumping rope early at the event, and I made a point of trying the idea myself so that I can remember it and use it again.

From "Tar Beach" by Faith Ringgold

  

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