I can’t believe it’s August 1st already!! You may have noticed we release issues of Wet Paint just a tad before the season it’s associated with starts…this gives you time to order, read, practice and get inspired in time for the upcoming season: FALL!

The fall issue is now available worldwide through our printer, Blurb! CLICK HERE TO ORDER! By the end of next week we should have printed copies in stock and ready to ship from our shop too, so you can order along with your supplies! Once they’re in stock, you can find them HERE!

The fall issue is not to be missed! Our theme this issue is blacklight and sugar skulls! With fall comes dia de los muertos, and our Facebook feeds will soon be filled with sugar skull designs. But what is the meaning behind them, and what is appropriate imagery to include in these designs? Who better to answer these questions than the sugar skull queen herself, Shawna Del Real?

Of course we just had to interview the incredible blacklight artist John Poppleton on the subject of blacklight painting for this issue’s theme! Learn more about John and his tips & suggestions for blacklight painting!

Also in this issue, learn about the magical cosplay fantasy faire “Elfia,” as we celebrate Face Painting In Progress’s (FIP) 10th year painting there!

The incredibly talented Nancy Wu has not only graciously answered our Pro Artist Q&A questions this issue, but has shared some valuable tips and gorgeous work that hasn’t been shared yet!

Kiera Taylor has created a wonderful step by step unicorn design to share with you, and we’ve also interviewed 8 (almost 9) year old Corey Charlton for this issue’s Kid Artist Spotlight!

In this issue’s poll we’ve asked you if you’ve ever left an important part of your kit at home, what it was and how you managed. Read on for some great, anxiety inducing stories! Blacklight, uv, neon, fluorescent, dayglow, glow-in-the-dark..what does it all mean? Check out this issue for a piece that helps sort out the terminology and what it all means for us as artists!

Looking for more fall and Halloween inspiration? Be sure to order our issue from last fall (Vol 1 issue 2), where I share some cute, fun, non-gory Halloween designs!

I had such an amazing time this morning, painting a beautiful belly!! And what a FUN and colorful theme…I LOVE Nemo!! Here area a few photos from this fun session!

I always send my clients a sketch of their design idea first. Sometimes it’s a drawing, and sometimes I paint on the back of my practice head and take a photo, but in this case my “sketch” was all digital. I compiled 5 different images from Google to create this overall scene:

Digital “sketch” and reference photos

The mirror moment…my favorite! 😀

This one turned out SO fun and colorful.  It’s hard to find a really nice, bright orange, but for Nemo I combined a little of my Global UV orange with my regular Paradise orange to give it some more pop.

The blues in the background are a combination of FAB’s awesome shimmers (Ziva blue & snow petrol). I used some Global dark blue for the deep, darker areas and Paradise light blue & white for the sun rays. I topped it off with just a touch of Pixie Paint to add some sparkle in the bubbles! 🙂

Everyone always asks how long they take to paint but time always gets away from me….bellies are my favorite to paint so I easily lose track of time! This one I was painting for a little over an hour and a half or so. But I easily could have kept going, haha! Time flies when you’re having fun!

For more info on my belly paintings, or if you’re interested in having one done yourself, check out my belly painting page!

We’ve been busy adding more new products to our assortment lately! You may have seen us post some of these on Facebook but here’s a roundup of what’s been added most recently. Check out the shop to find all of these new goodies, and more to come!!

12″ x 3″ Bubbles stencil…great for arm bands & strips!

Great little butterfly assortment stencil!

Large 1.5″ foam dauber

With Loew-Cornell discontinuing SO many of their brushes, we’ve decided to take on some beautiful new Princeton brushes!

Lots of new PRINCETON brushes!!!

Princeton 1/4″ dagger brush!

We’ve recently added several colors of Pixie Paints to our growing assortment, including Fifi Royale, Cupcake Day, Labyrinth, and Valley Girl! Here’s our full assortment of options:

Pixie Paint Assortment

With more Pixie Paint comes more ways to apply it! We are now carrying an array of pixie paint applicators! These are made of durable, washable silicone. I really like the little clear/white tipped one as it fits great into the little jars of Pixie Paint. The larger ones are great for bigger jars, and applying pixie paint and other glitter gels to larger areas of the body or in the hair!

I love this little one for the small jars of Pixie Paint!

 Our FAB assortment is growing, too! We now have Cameron Garrett’s “Summer Sorbet” rainbow cake, and have added minty blue, and both regular and shimmer versions of Petrol Blue!

Fun size henna kit

25 gram bags of henna powder, sold individually too!

Check out the shop today! Don’t forget to subscribe to our FREE monthly e-newsletter too, to receive 10% off coupons!!

Happy painting!

Since I started my college career in Industrial Design I have really never been without at least one sketchbook in the works.  Early on I was taught the value of sketching, and especially “thumbnails” in particular. The term “thumbnail sketch” refers to a small, quick sketch. Whenever I was given a problem to solve through design, the very first place I’d always go was brainstorming through thumbnail sketches.  The beautiful thing about thumbnails is that they don’t have to be beautiful. They don’t even have to be seen by anyone but you. They can be chicken scratches on a napkin with a ballpoint pen, but if they get the idea out of your brain and into some visual form that you can look back on and recall as an idea, that’s all they need to be.  

My current face painting sketchbook!

Focus on Quantity, NOT Quality!

I’ve found the best way to come up with any ideas, whether it was in my product design and retail display design days or more recently in face and body painting, is to get as many ideas out on paper as quickly as possible. Get it down just enough to convey the idea, then move on to another. I tend to be a perfectionist so I purposely sketch with pens or colored pencil so I can’t erase and “fix” my mistakes. Fill the page with ideas, good or bad, and don’t even critique them yet. Just get them out! 

Every Idea Has Value!

From there the creative process seems to flow so much easier when you have a page of ideas to explore, vs trying to evaluate them in your head first.  It enables you to perhaps go back to an idea you thought was bad, realizing it has merit, whereas if you had never sketched it in the first place, it may be lost forever. You never know when some old sketch will spark a new idea!

Conquer the Blank Page

When designing products I didn’t usually use color much…just a pencil or ballpoint pen on white paper. However, color is important in face & body painting (and I want my face painting sketchbook to be FUN and full of COLOR), so I use colored pencils more now. Some of my sketches are just the start of a design, just enough to convey the idea, while some are almost exactly what I end up painting.

How most of my sketchbook pages start!

When I turn to a blank page in my sketchbook, I’ll first quickly sketch out pairs of eyes with a nose…usually between 4 and 8 pairs of eyes per page.  So if you’re imagining my page, each design sketch is usually 3 inches square or so. (I like to sketch small!)

The eyes of course don’t have to be uniform or perfect!! This immediately removes any intimidation of a blank page staring back at you. Well, okay, now there are 10 eyes staring back at you, but we’ll call that less intimidating than a blank page. 😉 The point is, now I have a goal: finish these 6 faces with 6 designs.  If I’ve sketched 5, it makes me push myself for one more! It gives me the drive to complete the page. My goal from here may be to draw 6 versions of snake designs, sharks, butterflies, dogs, or whatever. Maybe I’m working on something for a competition, and in that case they follow the theme of that competition.  But in the end, I’ll have a page of concepts, and can choose the one I want to explore further, without losing all the other ideas that were in my head.

Sometimes I’ll add another step to my design development before painting on an actual face, and paint a practice head or PainterTemplate. However, if I feel I’ve sufficiently worked it out on paper, I often go right to the face.

Sketchs vs Final Designs…

Here are just a few samples of my tiny sketchbook sketch, next to the final design…

Some of my sketches with their final designs!

As you can see, some of these vary in the end in their placement, detail, etc.  But the sketch gives me enough of an idea to paint from.  

3 Rewards of Sketching

There are many rewards of keeping a sketchbook, but one of them is just having a physical book of ideas to flip through and look back on. It’s almost like a scrapbook or photo album of my face painting adventures! This doesn’t happen with wipe-off practice boards. Among my design sketches, I have pages of notes from face painting workshops and conferences, ideas for my business marketing materials, etc! It’s always rewarding to look back on where I’ve been and recall projects from the past, all while being inspired to paint something I sketched years ago and never painted.

Having a sketchbook also enables me to improve my face painting without face painting. Say I’m sitting on an airplane or in the car on a road trip. It may not be practical to be practicing with my brush and paints, but it’s easy to sketch! So when I’m having an influx of creative ideas, they don’t have to wait or get lost…sketching enables me to work through designs when I normally couldn’t.

The third thing I love about having a sketchbook is that on those sometimes rare occasions when I have a kid around who’s willing to let me practice on them, I have a pile of ideas to pick from! I don’t have to sit and think about what I want to practice…I just open the book. Sometimes I’ll let my boys flip through and pick a sketch they think is cool, and I’ll paint that. They are always more willing when they pick the design!

So give it a try! You don’t have to be an amazing artist or great at pencil drawings. Paint in your sketchbook with a brush if you wish! I can almost guarantee that if you give sketching a try long enough, you’ll see just how much more polished your final designs will look, and will love looking back at your ideas!

Happy painting!! 🙂

Get yours HERE!

It’s an exciting day here at Paintertainment!! My latest book, “Jewelry for Face & Body Artists,” is now in stock and ready to ship!!

Get your copy today!! Due to overwhelming requests from European retailers to stock this book, my first run is already selling out quickly!! But if you’re too late, don’t worry, we already have more on order that should be coming in about a week. Stay up to date with the latest by following our Facebook page!

Thanks SO much for your support! Happy painting!!

We’ve recently added a bunch of new bling to the shop!! Check our huge assortment of gems today! Here are the new ones just added today:

Holographic round gems – way prettier than they look in the photos!

Neon adhesive backed gems

Super cute dolphins and starfish!

Multi-faceted round and ovals are super sparkly and adhesive backed!

180 piece bags of neon 5mm round gems (loose, no adhesive)

Big, flat hearts…awesome for Valentine’s day!!

Premium crystals in assorted pastel colors and sizes

Premium crystals, clear/holographic in assorted sizes

I’ve been busy lately working on painted jewelry!! For two reasons…this fall I will be traveling to Belgium to teach at the JAMvention again, and will be teaching jewelry! I am SO excited and SO honored to be invited to teach again, and for their big 10th anniversary!! And the second reason, I’m working on a new book about jewelry painting…so excited! My “Realism for Face & Body Artists” book does touch on jewelry a little bit, but there is SO much more to cover, it definitely warrants it’s own book. So, stay tuned this year for a new ultimate reference for painting jewelry! I’ll be covering gems as well as many other types of stones, different kinds of chains, different types of gem cuts, and a bunch of great tips and tricks for speeding up the little details!

Here are a few paintings I’ve done in the past week…

Aaah…SO much fun!! I have a few others I did today that I’ll share later, so stay tuned to the blog, Facebook, Instagram & twitter for more! Thanks for stopping by, and happy painting!!

We are so excited to announce that the spring issue of Wet Paint Magazine is now available to order worldwide!

Kristin Olsson and Bianca Hannah have both generously created a total of 3 step by step designs for this issue’s theme of flowers & butterflies! Also, we’ve interviewed 8 year old Puck Janssen of Holland for this issue’s “Kid Artist Spotlight!”

2017 Year in Review!