Face painting is a fun, exciting way for kids to become the animals and creatures they adore. But the fun can come at a price. Some parents spend hundreds of dollars hiring the services of professional face painters for just a few hours of painting. There is a technique, however, for face painting animals that most anyone can learn. You can create a fierce tiger face with just a few tips.
Instructions
1. Apply white face paint to the upper lip and eyelids with a make-up sponge. Dab the color on--don't smear it as it will create an uneven and unrealistic saturation. When dabbing on the eyelids, go from lashes to eyebrow.
2. Dab yellow face paint on the T-zone of the face. (The T-zone begins at the bridge of the nose, leads up to where the forehead starts, and extends an inch out on either side of the nose.) That whole area should be lightly dabbed with the yellow paint. This will create a sunburst affect of light color before the darker color is added.
3. Apply the orange face paint to the sides of the face from the cheek bones to just under the eye. The movements should be smooth. Sweep the make-up sponge from the outside of the cheek bones and blend inward. This will make the effect more realistic. Do this on each side of the face.
4. Swipe on the orange paint in a triangle using the eyebrow as the base of the triangle. The top point of the triangle should reach the hairline. You will do one triangle of paint (fully filled in) over each eye. These triangles will be the tiger's ears.
5. Paint a black line across the bottom of the nose. Make a small line of black to separate the nostrils. This is the Tiger's nose, there is no need to fill in the whole nose completely.
6. Starting from the corner of the mouth, make a black line and curve it until it is just below the outward corner of the nostril. Do not connect the line to the nostril. Do this on both sides of the nose. You also should make a thin line from the center of each nostril down to the top of the lip. This is the tiger's mouth muzzle.
7. Paint a long black line just under the top of each cheek bone, followed by a slightly shorter one 1/2 inch beneath it. These are the tiger's stripes.
8. Add the final touches to the face by lining the ears and the eyebrows with black paint. Carefully dot on three black whisker holes: two dots, 1 centimeter apart, and one dot, 1 centimeter below the top two. The dots should resemble the frame of a triangle. Do this on each side of the mouth, trying to make the dots symmetrical.
