Today I was practicing some balloon twisting, and working on coming up with a few variations of a snail! The little orange one is just a single 160 balloon with a yellow scrap. The pink & yellow one uses two 260’s and one pink 160, while the bigger one with the chrome shell uses three 260’s and a white round!
It’s super useful to have multiple ways to make different things, not only for the ability to adjust your speed at an event, but to account for any variations in the supplies you may have packed!
It got me thinking of course of how we do this same thing with face painting. I can do a quick cheek art version of something, a more detailed half-face, or a full face, for many of my designs! So I thought I’d put together a little video of the amount of variety you can achieve JUST within the CHEEK ART category alone! Here I start with s super fast snail that is made up of one pounce of a dauber and three teardrops! I then go on to add a little more detail, stepping it up with google eyes, and finally with more shading and festival glitter! The variations are endless, but I hope you enjoy this little sampling of speedy snails!
I am SUPER excited to announce my latest book, hot off the press! “Funny Fingers Hand Art” It’s been 3 years since I’ve published a book…about how long it’s been since my first baby boy started getting mobilized! I think you can guess what’s been keeping me busy since! I got the idea for this book and 3 weeks later it was going to print. I love what my drive to complete a project can do when combined with the amazing ability the internet gives me to publish my own books! (Well, it would have been done in 2 weeks, but I had to paint at the fair right in the middle of it!)
Unlike my previous two books, “Face Painting: A Step-by-Step Guide” and “32 Classic Carnival Designs,” this book is not designed for the total beginner. This new book assumes that you have the ability to paint and have some artistic skill as a face painter. It definitely stretches the imagination! If you’re a professional face painter, are finding yourself “stuck” in the same old cheek art designs, and are looking for some fresh, fun, new ideas to get your creative juices flowing, this is the book for you!
The book measures about 6″ wide (including the spiral binding) by 8.5″ tall, making it the perfect size: large enough to see each step, but small enough to tuck into your kit of paints and take with you. It costs a little more to bind a book with the spiral binding, which is why you won’t find that on the other popular selling books currently out there that focus on princess faces, cat faces, etc. However, being a professional face painter myself and a professional product designer, I know that when you’re painting, your hands are both full and you don’t want to mess with trying to hold a page open. The spiral binding allows the book to lay flat on the table for reference, or fold completely back if you just want to reference one page.
So what’s the big deal about painting on hands vs the face? Kids just LOVE them. A little creative placement on the hand, combined with a child’s imagination, can bring your designs to life! Kids can open and close their fingers to make an animal’s mouth open and close, to make legs walk, or to wiggle the fire coming out of the space ship. Parents love to see their child’s own hand transform into a puppet…a fun toy that they can enjoy all day and won’t find broken under their bed two days later!
The beginning of the book opens with a couple pages of tools and tips. Tips include hand-painting-specific things like how to get a smooth, solid line across a knuckle. The “Design index” spread functions as a visual table of contents for the designs. This makes it quick and easy for you to find the page you want, and also can double as a design menu board if you use it at your events for the kids to choose from!
There are 18 designs, each one illustrated with full color photography in six steps, along with a large, full-page photo of the finished design. Most of the designs also include the “Get Creative!” box at the bottom, which includes more ideas to make your design unique and inject your own style!
My little 3 and a half year old Sammy is really at the age where he’s getting into the face painting. He prefers to have them on his arms, legs, and hands though, so he can see them. Usually when Mommy gets home from a gig, I have one last customer demanding a painting when I walk in the door!
Here are a few of the creations that he come up with and asked me to paint in the past few weeks…
For this one he asked for a “Beetle car.” It had to be blue, like Thomas, of course, and I used some metallic silver for the bumpers and wheels.
He was extremely specific on this one. It had to be an orange house with a green roof, a blue garage door, and an apple tree with apples. He has a very creative, vivid imagination like his Mommy, and I love helping him realize his “vision!”
This is Otis, our dog. Sammy came up with the idea to make his tail on his finger so that it could be “wagged.”
This is Amos, our other dog. He had to have his green collar, too.
The other day he asked me to paint an Angry Bird on one hand, all loaded up in the sling shot, and a green pig on the other hand. He then proceeded to bang his fists together while making Angry Bird sounds all night! Wish I had gotten a photo of that one! (or maybe a movie would have been better!)
Here are a few more of my hand paintings I just thought I’d share! You can find them on my Facebook page too.
This one is actually going to be on the cover of my new book which will be coming out very soon… “Funny Fingers Hand Art!” I’ll be sure to blog about it once I have copies in my hands to ship.
These two below I just did tonight. I spent maybe 15 minutes on the marshmallow roasting one and probably 20 or so on the birthday cake. I never get to spend this much time on my very adorable yet often times wiggly little clients, so it’s fun to put more time into painting my own hand!
My 3.5 year old Sammy thought this one was pretty cool. I used some metallic silver paint for the roasting stick and a touch of UV-Day Glow paint in the flames.
This is another one I thought of while at the fair but didn’t get around to painting…which was fine, because doing it at home after the kids went to bed gave me more time to pay attention to detail. I used metallic again on the platter. Guess I had flames on the brain tonight!
The 2011 Dakota County Fair is in full swing!! Rollie Brandt kicked off Paintertainment’s 14th year yesterday in our booth just inside Exhibit Hall South (aka “Building 22”). This year we have a whole new selection of full-face designs, as well as some really fun hand designs! We haven’t done any full face designs yet, but will post when we do…here’s one fun hand design that Rollie did yesterday: a horse! The initials are from this horse’s name. These hand designs are super fun for kids as they can turn them into little puppets and make them talk.
Rollie will be out there at the booth all day today, and Gretchen will be painting tomorrow. Come on out to the fair and see us…I don’t think the weather has been more perfect in my 14 years at the fair!
I’ve been having a little fun lately, combining my face paints with Photoshop’s ability to create animated GIF files. Check out my first animated “handimal!” I painted this shark on my hand last night, took a photo of his mouth open and closed, and today turned it into an animation. Of course, I’d love to make it way cooler, and make him eating a fish or something, but this was what I could accomplish during my boys’ nap time. 😉 Click on the image below if it isn’t animating, or you can see it directly on my work examples page! Enjoy!
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