Halloween Face Painting — Photos from the Company

Extra Spooky Ghoul by Laura

There just weren’t enough faces to paint this weekend. I have a very disappointed company of artists. Roberta feeling bad that she had no chance to paint some of the real scary stuff because both her events were “snowed out” — Laura frustrated that she couldn’t paint the Day of the Dead faces she’d been researching. At some of the events that did go on, only a handful of people showed up due to the extreme and surprising weather. In the limited opportunities, a bunch of the artists were good enough to take photos and send me some, a selection of which are here, including faces from Lorraine, Jennifer, Britt, Christine, Laura and one of our newest members, Colleen, who contributed a really cool skeleton design. I think Laura wins the “spookiest” award, with her “Extra Spooky Ghoul” face. Jennifer continues to forge ahead into new design concepts for all of us by continuing to apply the lessons we are learning from fine art paintings to new themes such as her “Gauguin Witch“. And Lorraine’s juxtaposition of the face of the Statue of Liberty with the New York skyline is something we can use all year round.

If you paint faces, take photos. You will learn more from looking at your own work than from any teacher. Retain the successes, learn from the failures. Try designs again, even the failures. And don’t be afraid to try something new. I am very happy that all the artists that work with me don’t just paint the same designs I do — i learn from them as much as they learn from me.

Yo-Yo Ma was on Colbert the other night, and he had some advice for all of us who do any art. Talking about the new group he’s working with, and their new album “The Goat Rodeo Sessions”, he said they all want “to do something very well”, but he also said they always wants to take risks, “to go to the edge where you see a better view”.

Tribal Zombie by Laura

Spiderman by Colleen

Skeleton by Colleen

Statue of Liberty watching New York by Lorraine

Gauguin Witch by Jennifer

Princess by Jennifer

Zombie by Christine

Ghoul Girl by Colleen

Ghoul by Colleen

Ghosts in Graveyard by Lorraine

Flamingo Lily by Laura

Tree by Britt

New York Dancing Couple by Jennifer

Biplane by Laura

Alien 3 Eyes by Christine

Half Dead by Laura

http://www.agostinoarts.com

Halloween Face Painting — Halloween Night: NYC Parks and Recreation

Nov1

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

http://www.agostinoarts.com

Halloween Face Painting — Sunday: Halloween Party

Oct31

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.