Zoo Do 2014

Last night, some friends and I painted again at the Bergen County Zoo at Van Saun Park in Paramus.  It was a blast!  Two of the other face painters are clowns and I love hanging out with clowns.  Such big personalities, it's a blast.

It's funny, although there are four of us painting, and the way we work it is that there's only one line and each artist with an empty seat just calls for the next person in line, each of us tends to end up with our own popular faces for the event.  I heard the artist nearest me painting kitty after kitty, while I didn't have one single kitty request.  My big thing last night was dragons.  I painted a slew of dragons and had some fun with them.  I love asking kids - or adults, for that matter - "What color are dragons where you come from?"  The most common breeds of dragons seem to be green, red, and blue.

I did get one very specific request for this dragon, but with teeth, which I guess from looking at the internet now (I haven't seen the movie yet and really should), he develops as he gets older; mom called up the image on her phone.  Not sure I captured it, but it was on the fly, so I don't think I did a terrible job.

Of course, even with all the dragons, I couldn't have a gig without butterflies.  There are always butterflies.  But I decided to have some fun with them.

There are also almost always tigers, so I decided to have some fun with those too.

 Not everyone chose pretty.  There were a couple of fierce T-Rexes too.

The coolest request, though, was my last of the night - an owl.  I think I've only painted a full face owl once before, and I know for a fact this one was better.  She loved it!

Whole Lotta Paintin' Goin' On

I only had two gigs this weekend, but I think I may have painted enough faces in 4 and a half hours to rival the Tribeca Film Festival painting days!

On Saturday afternoon, I made my second annual appearance at the Glen Rock Newcomer's Association's kickoff party.  I was there for two hours, flying like the wind, but man, did I have fun.  I worked from a limited list of my fastest faces to keep things moving quickly and was assigned a couple of teens as line managers who did a phenomenal job making sure the kiddos had their choices made before hitting my chair.

I obviously didn't have time for photos, but did ask one of the girls to take two photos of faces I especially liked.  This was a slightly different take on my typical dragon and I thought it was cute.

Even more fun was my new "Zombie bite" face, inspired by Pashur, a master body artist out of Las Vegas.  It may just be my new favorite face.

How creepy is she?!  Those eyes!  Gotta say, I wouldn't want to meet up with that face in the middle of the forest.  Or city, for that matter.

That face was such a hit on Saturday, that I brought it out again on Sunday, when I painted for the very first time for the Heat & Sole Walk to benefit heart failure and transplant patients.  What an amazing group!

The funniest thing to me, and I regret not getting a photo of him, was an older boy who saw my zombie bite and just had to have one.  While I was painting him, he told me, "You painted my sister at a party at Bounce U a few weeks ago!" and showed me a photo on his phone of a pink kitty that was easily recognizable as one of mine.  Turns out this young man was at that birthday party, which was for a five-year-old girl and her friends, and was too old for face painting.... until he saw the cooler options he had this time around!  Ha!  I call that vindication, my friends.

This face also inspired an adult woman to have me "do something creepy" on her arm, and was happy with what I came up with.

To be honest, so was I.  Fun, right?  In case you can't tell, Halloween is my favorite holiday.

I had a lot of my regular fare too, including one boy who was really excited when I told him, in listing several options and ideas, "When I say I can do a bear, I mean panda, polar, or brown bear," and exclaimed happily, "Brown bear!"  So a brown bear he was.

Now I just hope they have me back next year!