Good Face Painting / Bad Face Painting… Sometimes it’s your Gear
Posted on May 27, 2009 08:33:00 PM
I’m a good facepainter. I know this because people pay me money to do it. Sometimes I even look at my work and say to myself, “Self, that looks really good.” If people ask for something, I can usually manage it. Now, so far my theory has worked just great at kids parties (well, except for the tweety bird incident, but I’m not going to talk about that). I have all my own equipment with me and I know most of the faces and characters that kids like.
Unfortunately for my self-esteem, my grown up friends who do live action roleplay (LARP) have started asking me to do makeup for game characters. These have a tendency NOT to be things I’ve done before and they NEVER bring a picture! Alien pirate tattoos were fine. I made some stuff up on the spot (and a huge thank you to HeatherB from SillyFarm for her lovely video tutorial on swirls and curls, without which I would be lost). My pirate friend had people online asking where she got the cool tatts, so that came out pretty well.
Biblical verse tattoos I flat out refused to attempt, especially since my monk friend wanted loads of them all done in permanent marker. 
I can paint, but my handwriting is ummm… not good. This is why I type. Stick to what you’re good at. Then there are the various monsters and undead horrors which are almost always a feature of fantasy movies, books and yes, games…
Recently, I went along to a game that took place in the Cornwall Park Domain. I created an amethyst-golem rock man (yes, really, here he is partly done) in five minutes flat with my own gear. It was a rush job, but it was ok. Then I raced off up to the “crew” area, not realising that it was some distance away and I was not going to be able to run back down to my car for my own gear at any point during the night. I was asked to makeup four people as skeletal zombies. Now, I am NOT the 
Wolfe Brothers, 4 year olds do not often ask to be hideous and scary, but I can do a general skeleton face, normally.
This was not normally. It was dark, raining a bit and the only light was a set of car headlights. There was one small bottle of water and no sponges or brushes, only makeup remover pads, you know, those little round cotton things, and the black paint was nasty, plasticy and thick. The result looked like a four year old had done it. In the light from the headlights and the flash camera, I was mortified. (hah, no pun intended) Moral for those starting out, GET GOOD GEAR! Pay the extra. There is NO comparison between great brands like Kryolan, Wolfe Bros, Snazaroo and Ben Nye and the cheap nasty rubbish you buy from discount shops in the mall. 
I’ve always used good paints and had no idea how bad it could be until that night.
Having said all that, in the dark of the night in the park, with their “eyeholes” raggedy and broken looking and the white streaked and pestilent, they looked scary enough, so it wasn’t all bad.