Tag Archives: bodypainting

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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Halloween Face Painting — Sunday: Halloween Party

Alien Belly Mouth

The freakish weather is turning this into the Halloween That Almost Wasn’t, with power outages and downed trees closing public events, so instead of painting hundreds with a team of artists at a zoo I shifted over to painting a few dozen at a Country Club. It’s a party we’ve done annually, so the staff are friendly, egging each other on to get painted, and the kids talk about what they were painted as in previous years.

Here are some of the photos of my work at the party, including some new takes on face designs I’ve been exploring throughout this Halloween season, like the Zombie Attack, and Saturday’s Zombie Eating Brains. While painting an alien onto a little kid a couple days ago I had the idea for the one here called Alien Belly Mouth — and for those of you new to painting face note that this design is essentially the same design as the Vampire Attack face, the same placement position on the face of a cartoonish figure, with just some details changed to make this basic concept into different characters.

My company artists have started to send me photos of their work over the weekend, so a gallery of their faces will be coming soon.

Vampire Attack

Zombie Attack

Demon - Goblin - Troll

Zombie Eating Brains

Zombie, on one of the waiters

Not everyone asked to be spooky...Fairies and Flowers

Sliding Home

What do you paint on a girl dressed like a hot dog?

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Halloween Face Painting — Saturday: Boo at the Zoo

Vampire Attack - With the bad weather it was a slow enough day that I had time to think of new designs to try like this variation on a figure placement we've used for other themes like aliens and sports figures.

Ice and Snow falling from the sky on a New York Halloween weekend, very unusual. And bad enough that outdoor events canceled and indoor events were under-attended.  The one good thing about days like these are that with less people to paint we can take more time with the faces and, especially, with the interaction with the people we paint. We have time for more playfulness and for working out new ideas. I was painting at the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn http://www.prospectparkzoo.com/ , and as the snow began to fall very few families showed up for Boo at the Zoo — so we got to paint the zoo staff and volunteers that don’t always get a chance. Even on a bad day, facepainting is a fun job (well on most bad days, at least).
Here’s a few from today.

Werewolf Moon variation - We were using our "nice or Spooky" theme and this staff volunteer said he wanted a face that was a little of both.

Turning a Georgia Okeeffe abstract painting into a bird

Another example of our current thread of working from fine art images, taking a Paul Klee abstract landscape painting and giving it a zoo-appropriate animal theme

Sunflower, a favorite subject

A playful squirrel face to suit this volunteer's wonderful smile

Zombie Eating Brains was another idea I had while waiting for more faces to paint, and I was glad to ahve a chance to try it. I'm sure I'll paint it again tomorrow and work to fit the idea to the face better. When I painted this face, the sweet little girl who was next in lines covered her eyes, and she wouldn't take her hands down (even as Jennifer tried to paint her face) until this young man left the room.

When it was time to paint that young girl's Dad we decided his "spooky" face shouldn't be too spooky, so I left out the eyes on the eyelids trick and gave him flying ghosts instead