Face Painting - How to Create Gorgeous Body Art at Your Childs Party

Not so long ago my daughter and I attended a beachside festival to celebrate a bumper fishing season. As you would expect at any festival we noticed many children walking around proudly displaying some absolutely gorgeous body art, in the form of face painting.

Now I am not talking clown faces and cheek flowers here, though those are cute and fun to do, I'm talking full on almost theatrical face painting with incredible shading and artistic flair.

Naturally we hunted down the guilty party and sat down for a bit of decorative indulgence too, and since that day I have been on a mission to learn the art myself as it really is a lot of fun and can be quite a useful talent too when it comes to school fairs, fundraisers and of course other parties.

Of course you need to start at the beginning with the 3 basic tools and these are:

Face Paint: This is specially designed for use on the skin and is water soluble so also easy to remove. You can purchase this type of paint at many party stores, dance supplies stores and of course online. They come in palettes or as individual pots and the colour range is huge. Start off with a basic colour range of perhaps black, white, blue, red, green, yellow, pink and flesh tone. These are great colours to practice with and are enough to create a wide variety of designs.

Brushes: Start off with 3 synthetic artists brushes. A fine pointed one for details and outlines, a medium pointed brush for bolder strokes and a largish brush for filling in large areas. As you progress you can begin adding more brushes to your collection, each allowing you to achieve a certain effect. Synthetic is best as it is much softer on the delicate facial skin.

Sponges: You'll need a sponge to cover large areas, such as the base for a full face design. You can start off with regular latex make-up sponges which are triangular in shape and thus make it easier to control the area you are applying the paint and create lines too. As you get more proficient you can buy a whole range of different sized sponges from the make-up supplier which will give you even more effect options