There’s something appealing about cartoons in face painting designs. Perhaps it’s that they carry a personality of their own, with their happy or comical expressions. But whatever the reason, both kids and adults love them. Today’s tutorial is a happy, daydreaming bear who I hope brings extra smiles to your parties and events this year.
Materials
• TAG pearl sky blue
• TAG pearl white
• TAG lilac
• TAG purple
• Paradise white
• Paradise light brown
• Paradise dark brown
• Paradise dark pink
• Diamond FX white
• Diamond FX black
• Cosmetic pink glitter
• #1 round brush
• #2 round brush
• #5 round brush
• Sponge
• Cloud stencil
Tutorial
Begin by sponging TAG pearl sky blue on the lower part of the forehead, just above the eyebrows. If you like, you can actually take the color down over the eyelids, but that’s up to you and the person in your chair. Some younger children are uncomfortable with paint around their eyes, so for the younger ones, I would stay up by the eyebrows.
Above the blue, sponge the TAG pearl lilac and TAG pearl purple, with the darkest color on the very top near the hairline.
At this point, you could stencil your clouds into place, but I chose to paint the bear first so I could place the clouds later while using him as an anchoring focal point and a spatial reference. Make sure you place his eyes high enough up on the forehead so there is room for his mouth and arms below them.
Load your #5 round brush with Paradise light brown for the bear’s head. For his mouth area, I mixed a little white in as well just to lighten it and give contrast. For the arms, I used a mixture of my light brown and dark brown.
Now for the clouds. There are two ways you can do the clouds. I took my cloud stencil and traced around it on card stock and then cut it out to give me a reverse image. Since I already had a blue background, I held the reverse image up and sponged a combination of TAG pearl white and Paradise white just along the edge to give my clouds the look pictured.
A second way of doing this without going to the trouble of making a secondary stencil is to make the background white where it is shown as blue in the photos above. Then hold the cloud stencil up and sponge blue along the upper edge. It should give you almost the same look. If you choose this second option, however, you will want to do your stenciling before your bear is in place, because otherwise it will be difficult to get the blue close to him.
The next step is to paint some lovely pink hearts on your design and add pink glitter to them. Rather than using my poofer bottle as I normally do, I unscrewed the lid and picked up the glitter with my dampened finger tip and dabbed it into place so I could control where the glitter was going. A little fell on the nose of my model, but I brushed it away with a dry kabuki brush.
Load your #1 round brush with a good lining black such as Wolfe black, Diamond FX black, or Global strong black to create your outlines. Make sure you stay up on the tip of the brush so you have control as you work.
As a final step, add highlights, stars, and starbursts on your design and outline your hearts if desired. Enjoy!
Beth MacKinney is the owner of and primary face painter for Face Paint Pizzazz in the NW Chicago suburbs. She also writes for Examiner.com as the Chicago Face Painting Examiner.