Tag Archives: William Blake

Face Painting Gallery — 2011 Holiday and Christmas Faces

I call this one "Big Santa"

Some of my favorite faces from this past holiday season, painted at private parties, corporate events and a number of end of the year celebrations for NYC Parks and Recreation sponsored by Derek Jeter’s Turn Two Foundation afterschool program.  A large part of our facepainting focus this past year has been to add more imagery to our face designs by incorporating figurative art, in some cases taking a cartooning approach and in others looking for inspiration in fine art, so there are a number of examples of that here, such as Lorraine’s image of a girl lighting a menorah, Jennifer’s designs of Santa and Elves with presents, and my Two Angels inspired by an illustration by William Blake. A number of the faces are just this years’ version of typical holiday images, like Santa Claus and reindeer. At one particular event I had some older kids that wanted to look scary rather than cute, so I had some fun mixing Halloween ideas in to create a Zombie Santa and Rudolph the Red-Nosed WereReindeer. It’s such a nice thing about what we do, that we can try just about anything and know that the people we paint will probably have as much fun wearing it as we have painting it—and, in case they don’t, it all washes off.

I think the most fun we've all had this year has been to paint a cartoon of a person on their own face doing something fun, like ice skating

Lighting a menorah -Face by Lorraine

Elf Ballet by Britt

Dancing Elf

Two of Jennifer's continuing explorations of new ideas, Santa and elves giving presents

Putting the star on the tree - my take on another idea of Jennifer's

From a William Blake illustration

Turning this girl into a angel

Dove of Peace

Combining a snowman with penguins or polar bears makes a very cute face, this year I played with the idea of penguins making their own "Snowpenguin"

and the polar bear making a snowman

Rudolph Flying

Face by Jennifer

Some of the scary stuff: Christmas Zombies

Were-Reindeer

Alien Santa

Zombie Santa - my favorite of the spooky ones

Tropical Christmas

Santa Smile

Santa Sky

Again this year we did the makeup for the "Jack and Jane Frosts" for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

Derek Jeter's Turn Two Foundation sponsored our appearance at a number of events for NYC Parks, so I painted this one for their event organizers

learn more about our facepainting and performances at:

http://www.agostinoarts.com

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New Faces – October 8 + 9: Zombies, Halloween, Vampires, Save the Turtles and Art on Faces

"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.

http://www.agostinoarts.com