If you are a new face painter, it will make sense to ask what face paints to use. If you are an experienced face painter, you might be surprised that you can increase the quality of your work by considering using different or additional face paints, different brands, and even dropping some that you have been married to for decades. So, consider this more as an exploration. Whatever you decide to do, I want this writing to help you make those decisions. That I can give you the stepping stones across the creek on which you can step to find success.

Liquid vs. Cake Face Paint

I started with Liquids and Creams. I started with Mehron Liquid Makeup, and early on fell in love with Fardel. The Fardel Liquids worked like liquid magic – they flowed on with little or no resistance. Even with a bad brush, I could start a wide line, and take it down to a tiny thread. The Mehron Liquids can do equivalent work, but it may take some adjustment with water to get them to the right consistency. Mehron Fantasy FX Creams are very good paints, although I find they can change consistency from too much warmth or too much humidity. I had the opportunity to attend two 2-day workshops with Olivier Zegers. His command of the liquid and creams was awesome, inspirational, and the best. He would apply a circle of cream, line it with black, carefully shape the black softly up on the cream, and you could see a miracle appear as the jaw turned into a complex vision of depth. Then, with both a round #8 and #6 brush, birds, trees, clouds, and much more would appear in seconds as has hands moved around the face.

With these liquids and creams I was assured of a tacky surface to place glitter that stuck, shined, and glimmered! This seemed like a magic combination, and I used it for eight years. Then, cake makeup started to appear on the face painting scene. I saw painters using cups of color and making beautiful faces… faces that did not have wet paint or creamy creams. So, I started using soe cake facepaint. This was an important step fo rme, as Fardel had become extremely difficult to buy in the United States.

Using cake face paints was a shock for me as an experienced face painter – I found them difficult to use. When I used them, I would be carrying too much water, and drip. Other times, they were too dry and would not flow at all. Sometimes, I would blend the liquid paints with the cakes or visa versa. Then, in

April 2012 I was able to take a full day class with Brian Wolfe (side note: at this writing, face painters all over the world are praying for Brian’s health due to his recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, visit Brian Wolfe’s Fight For Life page to help out if you can). The hours there were as powerful as the hours with Olivier Zegers. Brian gave us all one cake of white face paint. I had brought my entire face paint kit of 50 brushes, thirty creams, and lots of bottles of liquids, but Brian assured us that everything we would do that day was going to be done with a single cake of paint, a lone number 4 brush, and his life time of experience.

So, we stared with lines on practice head. Lines and lines and lines. At one point, Brian suggested that we paint lines up and down the side of the model head. I laughed and said that that was impossible. I would never have tried that my with liquids. So, Brian came up, took my practice head, and proceeded to curly cue, line, and decorate one side of the head and all the way down to the other. The cake had given his brush exactly enough color and water to keep flowing without dripping, stay consistent in color and just keep going! From then on, over the next four hours, this little #4 brush did more work than my hands have ever seen. The liquids have never been able to do this—my lines around my princesses’ eyes were never this graceful, this detailed, this luxurious. Again, at 64, I was too old to have to learn these kind of basics all over again, but I have tried.

Differences

There differences between liquid, cream, and cake makeup, are mainly to do with the differences in moisture. With cakes, you have one color. When I try to mix colors outside of their cups, the colors seem to dry too fast, or stay too wet. I do mix them in their cups, but then that messes up the color for future use. I often times will clean out a cup with a paper towel or nap. Then all is well. With creams and liquids, color mixing is easier and can be done on a palette while staying moist, giving vast variety to the amount of colors you have to use. With all types

I take my creams and put them into 2 inch diameter art cups, available at most art stores with screw tops or snap tops. I use or make blend Mehron Fantasy FX or Fardel creams in the following colors: Red, Pink, Light Yellow, Yellow, Light Orange, Orange, Dark Orange, Lion Yellow, Light Green, Yellow Green, Green, Monster Green, Camouflage Green, Light Blue, Blue, Turquoise, Lavender, Purple, Light Indigo, Indigo, White, Yellow White, Black, Beige, Tan, Brown, Dark Brown, Dark Grey, Light Grey, Gold, Silver, Copper. I also mix liquids re-using the Mehron bottles. I make all the colors that I make for the creams in addition to more shades of orange, browns and tans, and some colors that I make up to compliment the primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries. Why? It allows me to do animals with a light lined mesh that mimics fur. My Mardi Gras princesses pick up touches a indigo which is truly an exciting color.

In summary

If you are beginning, start with cakes, and see where and how far they can take you. The only real weakness of these cakes is that they dry before you can get the glitter on. To compensate for this you can roll you’re a #8 or larger round, slightly moistened, glitter dipped brush over the section where you want the glitter to stick. Ben Nye Glitter Glue and Ben Nye LiquiSet are great products, and Sally Beauty supply makes a clear glitter glue that works very well. In time, you can start using creams by adding black and white Mehron Fantasy FX, and then let your imagination and energy be your guide. You can send any questions about this post to my email, and I will answer any that I get.

Face Painting was once dominated by the use of liquids and creams. Olivier Zegers taught me to use them, and over the past ten years I have used Fardel and later Mehron Fantasy FX cream and Liquids. Recently, I have started to rely on cake face paints more and more after attending a workshop with Brian Wolfe in April of 2012 and watching various face painting videos on YouTube. So, what follows are not all my ideas… some of them are, but I started by watching and learning from others!Since I have started to working almost exclusively with cakes, I keep the liquids and creams for specific situations. So, if you are a new painter or an experienced painter, I want to share with you my discoveries of cake face paints, and split cakes in particular.Sponging on multiple colors from a cake made up of several colors is shown over and over again on YouTube. You will see Rainbow Cakes, cakes with various “theme” split cakes in many color combinations, ideal for quick base coats for many designs. Use a split cake to paint a basic shape, then add detail with white and black lines and swirls. I find that the multiple color cakes can come perfect in size for immediate application, but some of them are too large to use on a cheek or just over the eye, so I started making my own multi-colored face paint cakes.

The first one I made was a Rainbow cake which would fit better on children’s cheeks and above and next to their eyes. You see, here is a Mehron Paradise Prisma Arc-En-Ceil Rainbow Cake. As you can see, the cake is about 2 inches wide. This was too wide for any of my brushes, so I started using a large fan brush to lick up the paint. I would then squeeze the bristles to a width to fit on a child’s cheek or along the side of the face or across the forehead to provide a base for unicorns, butterflies, and stars. This was awkward, and did not make a good clear rainbow. So, I decided to halve the rainbow.

To modify the Prisma Cake, I first froze it overnight to make it firmer and easier to cut. This is because the cake had previously been used, and the water from earler use had made the paint soft. It is much easier to work with brand new cakes, and freezing isn’t usually necessary. Using a very sharp Stanley Quick Point blade (the kind with the snap-off blades), I cut the paint in half, compressed it and packed it back in the container. I also used a popsicle stick as a divider between the reds to create 2 distinct half-sized rainbow cakes exactly as wide as a child’s cheek and a perfect fit for aOne Inch Flat Brush. You might have to “clean” the cake with a dry paper towel after handling it.

This same basic technique works for creating your own split cakes, which you can do with any 2 or more colors. After making this rainbow cake, I moved on to making additional 2-color split cakes – white with a color. They create a color bordered by white, helping to create fantastic face paint flowers. In fact, stay posted, and I will be discussing Flowers in my next article.

To use a split cake, lightly spray the cake and the face painting sponge with water – not too much, practice will help you determine the amount. Then, stroke the cake back and forth in a straight line several times to make sure that the colors will be bright. Then paint on the skin in smooth strokes, later adding detail with a brush.

One note on using split cakes is that the various colors do not always wear evenly. This is because the pigments in the cakes have different densities. So, the blue in my white and blue cake dissolves much faster than the white. I try to keep back-up cake face paint to fill in when a color starts getting low.

So, let’s look at other cakes that you can make to help you face paint with wonder and magic. This takes me to an area that I really love—making flags!! Today, we have children with ethnic connections to every country in the world. If the see the flags we can make, they will pick them and enjoy them, and find pride in the ethnic identities.

The American Flag

There are 13 stripes of white and red. The box is 1 5/8” wide. So, for 13 stripes, I had to cut each stripe exactly 1/8”. This became too difficult and I eventually decided to make seven stripes, making sure to have two reds on the outside. Again, chilling the cakes makes it is easier to cut them. When you put the stripes, use only five of the stripes in the cake. When you put the stripes, use only five of the stripes in the cake. Start the first line of flag stripes “indented” to leave room for the blue field. Then, on your second stroke, overlap the red stripes, so you end up with 9 stripes. Then, after the stripes, you paint the corner blue, and add the stars with white, yellow, or bright gold. In the photos, you can see that I added glitter to the blue field.

I looked for other flags which I make color palettes, and I found quite a few. Some of them are just stripes, and some of them have stripes with a medallion or symbol painted within one of the stripes. I got the largest list at theodora.com/flags. If you need more detail, you can use Wikipedia. You can do lots of different flags using split cakes.

Well, that’s all for now, and I hope to back with examples of all of these flags.  Also, I am working on a blog about making Flowers.  Email me is you have questions, marcwkohler@aol.com or use facepaint.com.

The term “Palette” in the practice of art or face painting has two meanings. The first is the actual piece of wood, plastic, ceramic, paper, press board, or other support which holds the paints to be used in the painting. The second meaning has to do with the colors selected for the palette. That is why art critics discuss Rueben’s palette or Van Gogh’s palette as an attempt to select and study the colors used by these painters, discerning whatever limitations or opportunities that the particular selection gave the artist. In Face Painting, the term is used with both definitions.

Let’s look at the first meaning of palette for the Face Painter. Buying a set of paints in a palette gives you a physical space to hold your face paint cups. These can be moved from one space to another, and will give you a chance to put your colors in the most comfortable arrangement possible. I place mine in order of importance, so the least used colors are further away from the most used. With a smaller palette you will not get any “in-between” colors, just the major rainbow shades. If you can afford one, a larger 14 to 30 color palettes will give you the most variety. In these larger palettes, similar colors such as red and red-orange or red and yellow will not be next to each other, so, I rearrange it so the colors I use the most are closest to me: white, pink, light blue, yellow, and orange. The black, dark blue, dark brown and purple are grouped further away with dark colors surrounding the black. Most kits put the black and white right next to each other, but if you use liquid paints like I do, this can lead to cross-contamination when you are rushed.

Marc’s palette (Colors are stored with lids on, shown here without for visibility.)

My own palette is a homemade wood palette that holds lots of colors, and gives three shades each of Orange, Brown, Green and other colors that require highlights.Mehron Liquid Makeup 1st Row: White, Red, Yellow, Light Blue, Purple; 2nd Row: Black, Pink, Orange, Light Orange, Green, Light Yellow; On the side: Grey, Light Grey, Very Light Orange, Lavender, Monster Green, White, Indigo (often overlooked color)Mehron Fantasy FX Creams 1st Row: White, Red, Yellow, Beige; 2nd Row: Orange, Pink, Blue, Tan; 3rd Row: Green, Light Orange, Light Blue; 4th Row: Black, Brown, Light Green, Grey; 5th Row: Lavender, Dark Brown, Purple, Silver; One the Side: Monster Green, Copper, White Yellow, and Moonlight White Sally Girl Sparkle Effect Loose Glitter in various shades including white, gold and silver. Available online from Sally Beauty Supply. Refill the containers with your own glitter if desired.

Now, what colors to put in your own face paint palette? The most limited palette would be the primary colors red, blue, and yellow along with black and white. This gives you limited resources, but a conveniently small set of paints, and that can help keep thing simple. If you add the secondary and tertiary colors to these you get what is the normal color wheel. The extent of the possible colors becomes even larger still if you add the variations of Black to Grey, Brown to Tan, and/or the Metallics (Silver, Copper, Brass and Gold).

Why so many colors, and how large a palette do you want or need? Here is where the paint meets the brush, and the face meets expectations. I think that it was the Wolfe Brothers books that introduced me to stippling, and many designs in Face Painting magazine introduced me to the “dots” attack. Through these techniques, I learned that one color can made “alive” with complementary or competing colors. “POP” is the word we use to describe that lucky design or added touch that makes the wearer and their family discover that you are not just a face painter, but you are a FACE PAINTER!!!  For example, using four shades of orange make my tiger fur look like you could pet it, and multiple greys and browns make my cats and dogs look alive to the children and the face paint design takes on a wonderful Mask effect; the child will crawl, growl, and howl as they look at themselves in the mirror. The ability to add depth and excitement to your face paint designs is why you need BOTH a good physical Palette and a crazy and exuberant selection of colors.

Jumpy, nervous and/or scared children require Face Painters to be on alert and aware of their needs. All of us will bring to this task whatever training, intuitions, and assumptions that we have, but there are tested and tried techniques that can help you do your job. I have played Santa Claus for sixteen years, and I have seen extremely scared children. I have also rolled around on the floor, giggled, danced, and sang in order to inform the child that this Santa is no coal-giving vengeful punisher. For this Santa, the are NO naughty children, just stressed and alienated children who need to know that that elf on the shelf does not see or know or even tell anything to me. Sounds different, well, I hope it is, and I hope it will catch on.

So, let’s look at the problem of younger scared and/or nervous children from the easiest to deal with to the most difficult. Yong children are afraid of painting on their faces. So, lower your voice to speak quietly, and offer to paint the backs of their hands, maybe even offer to let them feel the brush on their skin with no paint on it, or paint a quick design (a heart or smiley) on Mom or Aunt’s or Uncle’s hand. These efforts help the child to know that the painting will not hurt! If the child is willing, try something small on the cheek of the caregiver. Often, this will lead to the child allowing cheek art to be painted, but do not be pushy if they’re not comfortable.

When I first started face painting years ago, I read every face painting book and magazine that I could find. Some of the international magazines reported on contests that were held at the festivals. There were contests with different requirements, and one that really interested me was the one where painters were required to use only sponges. That contest drew my attention because, as a new painter, I was having real problems with sponges. When I saw the winning designs, I was stunned. Here were intricate designs and textures that would be impossible for the sponges that I was using.It turned out that the winning painters did not use plain sponges. They arrived at the competition with sponges cut and shaped to make the intricate forms that appeared in their designs. Sponges? These were not sponges, they were sophisticated “stamps” and images cut from sponge material. Each “sponge” piece would be useless in any “normal” face painting.So, let’s talk about sponges that you can use when face painting, what the sponges can really do, and how best to use this information in your work. Some different types of face painting sponges are:

1. High Density Sponges
2. Hydra Sponges
3. Stipple Sponges
4. Natural Sponges
5. Sponge Stamps
6. Home-made Sponges

In today’s article, I am going to discuss the use of the standard High Density Face Painting Sponge and what I learned at a class that I took with Brian Wolfe.

There are several manufacturers who make and market the “high density sponge.” They are usually round, and can vary in diameter and thickness. Some are quite soft, others are stiffer. Each one will work differently in your hands. Face painters often cut them into two shapes–in half or in quarters. The half round is definitely the more popular, but the quarter sponge has some very good applications. The major use of sponges in Face Painting is to cover large areas of the face with a flat and full area of color. The goal is to create this coverage quickly and thoroughly.

So, start with a wet sponge and rub it over the face paint cup or into the cream (whichever you’re using). The amount of paint that you pick up will determine how easy the paint will go onto the skin, and how much you will be able to cover. Use too much paint and the paint will build up on the skin at the edges. You can see and feel when the cream face paint goes on too thick.

The one color base coat: If I am using creams, I will put a pop of paint on the nose, the forehead and the cheeks, I then spread the paint, and I work it, spreading the paint so that it is applied smoothly, evenly, and is opaque. This can be difficult, for your eye and hand coordination has to “see” slight changes in thickness, opacity, and texture of the paint. The goal is to create a cover which is exactly the same color and tone at every point. This is what distinguishes a practiced painter. If the base coat is uneven, splotchy, or too thick in some places, the detail of the design will be affected.

In the example from Brian’s class, we laid down a two color base coat of orange highlighted with yellow. Brian emphasized the fact that the highlights should be added to the high points of the face, taking the facial contours into consideration. The second photo shows the addition of a darker red orange a yellow tan base coat with white highlights on the chin and over the eyes. The third photo shows the same process of a sponge of two colors, not over each other, “lion” yellow and white.

Orange/Yellow Base

Red Highlights

Lion – Unblended Yellow/White

Once you have mastered this “all-over” base coat technique, you use the same technique to do sections of the face. If you look at European Face painting as compared to American face painting, you will find that the Europeans like to put down separate color areas, rather than build up from an all-over base. The disadvantage of this is that it takes more time and more accuracy, but the colors will be brighter because they are not being put on top of other colors. You have to make a sponge “hard-edge” to make sure that there is no blending of paints at the edges. The sponge “hard edge” is made by placing the edge of the sponge exactly where you want the paint to stop, pushing and sliding in a slow and deliberate fashion. The process, repeated will give you a hard edge as if you did it with a brush. As you work with the sponge, though, if this “edge” is difficult to accomplish, you can combine a brush line with a sponge to accomplish the same thing.

The following photos show a Spiderman in process. Do the eyes first—with a sponge if you can and with a brush if you can’t. I used a brush, but this is one application where the quarter sponge can do wonders. Then to avoid the red sponge work from blending with the whites of the eyes, brush on a safety band around the eyes. This way, when you apply the sponge base, it will go on quickly without any concern for crossing into the white and creating the dreaded pink.

White Eyes

Red Outline

Red Base

This is the way you work with the standard sponge, and now a surprise. If you get to look at any of the Wolfe books, you will see a stippling effect on almost every one of them. This stippling is usually accomplished by using a hard natural sponge, a stippling sponge, a splayed brush (which is something Brian suggested) OR, you lf can take your standard have sponge, and force it into a half donut with the flat side facing out by squeezing it around one of your fingers. This stretches the sponge, and widens the pores on that side. Here is what this technique can do:

Stippled detailing

This is discussion of some ways to develop your own designs for face painting, with the example of a lion. Face Painters tend to look toward other face painters’ work for inspiration. I have done it throughout my work – if I can see it, I can paint it (well, sort of). So I continue to seek out new designs, and try to find new techniques through alternative sources. I have to give credit to my Stage Make-up teacher, Jeffrey Butterworth, for these ideas.

Research the animal you’re designing

When designing your own lion, the first step is to find images through an internet search of “images” for lions. I like looking at photos for designing full face paint designs, I peruse “Clip Art” or “Black and White” images for designing cheek art. Assume that you know nothing about lions and examine these images as if “lion” means nothing to you. You will see details and aspects of the lions that you have never seen before. If you wish, save the image by right clicking on it (or ctrl + click on a Mac).

I also look at biological descriptions to broaden my image search. Here is the title for the family and species for lions:

If you go to the description of Pantheriae, you will find all of the lion’s “brothers and sisters” and you’ll find the skulls of the members very similar.  So, the difficulty with face painting lions is that because they have no spots, stripes, “cheetah” lines, or other obvious distinguising features, a lion face paint design can wind up looking like a brown/tan cat.

What distinguishes the lion from other cats?

We need to find what distinguishes the Lion from these others, so we will be able delineate lions from the others, as well as Lions from Cats. If you study photos of Lions, Tigers, Cougars and Leopards, you will see four distinctions. Lion noses are wider, and the fur above it forms a triangle of differently colored fur than the fur around the eyes. Secondly, the eyes do not have those sharp “feline” eyes, but rather, they are “sad” eyes with the outer lid going down at the edges. The third distinction is the white fur on the chin, and a small “mustache”. Notice how small the area of the white fur is. The fourth distinction is that the mouth frowns—more than a cat or kitten, and much less than the tiger and cougar. So, this should help us do a lion that will have these four elements in such a way that the final work will “read” lion.

To “read’ art is a way of seeing a work of art in a totality of the design. I was always fascinated by an art critique who looked closely at realistic paintings, and pointed out that in the nooks and crannies were pieces of abstract art. Those scribbles of paint “read” as lace or a jewel from a distance. As face painters, we do this kind of work all the time, and our little scribbles become reflections, tears, and anything else we want. So, let’s translate to a child’s face.

Painting the Lion Face

I use the following Mehron Liquid Face Paint and Mehron Fantasy FX colors:
White Mehron Liquid
Brown Mehron Liquid
Tan (a mix of Brown Liquid & White Mehron Fantasy FX)
Yellow/Tan (a mix of Tan and Yellow Mehron Liquid)
Black Mehron Liquid
Grey Mehron Liquid
Pink Mehron Liquid (for touching a bit at the end of the nose)

Start with the white. That goes under and over the eyes, and under the nose, and on the chin. (Photo 1) Remember, the chin and mustache hair does not flair out like a cat. Then, sponge on yellow/tan on all uncovered areas. This yellow tan is not on your standard palette. You have to make it. Without it, your lion will come out looking like a tan cat. (Photo 2) Then, I mix a Lion Brown, and sponge it as triangles over the nose, and around the edges of the face. (Photo3). Note. too, that the white under the lion’s eyes stand out more than the others Pantheras. Then, use a fine black brush to put on the lines around the eyes, trying to avoid the “Sharp” look. Extend the nose by making the nostrils outside of the kid’s nose.

Then add dimensions by putting “feather touch” black hairs to shade the black. (Photo 4). Finally, touch up the brown adding depth to the face. Using liquid white, gray, and black I add fine whiskers. (Photo 5). If you are lucky to have one, this is when you put the wig from the Wizard of OZ on their head!

Here is a modification with a “happier” mouth, while in the above design, I was trying to reproduce a real Lion look as much as I could.

This version also has glitter. While not essential, glitter is a great finishing touch to almost any design.

Good luck, and write to me through my Entertainer’s Page if you have questions or problems, or specific areas you would like me to discuss.