Lorraine and I painted at one of our favorite annual events last night, the Halloween Party at Materials for the Arts. Their event grows each year, this year BD Wong was the master of ceremonies. We’ve been painting at this event for a while, which means many of the folks we have seen and painted before, like this young man who very much wanted to be scarier than his brother, so I made him into an Insane Clown Zombie. At our annual New York events like this one, folks are familiar with the freedom and creativity we bring to each face and that encourages us to try new ideas, like this combination of a Monet color background with a dancing figure from an Andre Derain painting, as I continue to explore putting dancing figures on people’s faces. And I took the opportunity to do some “sketches” for faces I’ll be painting for a Dia De Los Muertos performance by Calpulli Mexican Dance Company on Nov 3 and 4 at Pace University’s Schimmel Center.
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:
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
At our annual New York events like this one, folks are familiar with the freedom and creativity we bring to each face and that encourages us to try new ideas, like this combination of a Monet color background with a dancing figure from an Andre Derain painting, as I continue to explore putting dancing figures on people’s faces. And I took the opportunity to do some “sketches” for faces I’ll be painting for a Dia De Los Muertos performance by Calpulli Mexican Dance Company on Nov 3 and 4 at Pace University’s Schimmel Center.
Continue reading
