How many FP here have any kind of art background? What brought them into Face Painting?

You mean the "Cone of Silence"???

HAHAHAHAHA

Ha! If you could get some sort of sound barrior field! That would be awesome! To paint in complete silence!

I'm dusting the cobwebs off this thread and giving it a sprinkle of glitter. Its fascinating to discover the backgrounds and paths that have lead to the face painting world.
There seems to be a general trend.... an artist in the family, a childhood interest that continued... an opportunity, coincidence or light bulb moment.
I was one of those kids too. Always playing with some sort of creative kit. My mum and aunty went to uni and studied visual arts when I was about 8 and obviously I got exposed to the art world quite a bit while growing up. After high school, my first full time job was working in children's animation (tv series) as a production assistant. This involved a lot of photcopying , but the part I enjoyed most was being a colour stylist for the incidental characters. Of course I didn't appreciate it at the time really, I was too young...
Later I studied and completed my Bachelor of Arts, Media Studies. I then worked in advertising for a few years before becoming a journalist. I love my job, but I've been on maternity leave (3rd baby) for the past 11 months. We have been working on plans for an indoor play centre which haven't yet come to fruition, and one thing lead to another... I discovered balloon twisting on youtube, and taught myself that... then somthow stumbled across a face painting tutorial - then Lisa Joy Young, Bec Anthony - and next thing this forum.
I buy a kit - after much research - develop a facebook page, start PPF at the markets and ballooning at school fetes... next thing I'm booked almost every weekend and several times a week over the summer holidays (in Oz). Getting lots of repeat / corporate clients too. I am totally addicted to all the colours and shiny glitter, just like the kids are.

Even though I go back to journalism p/t soon, I plan to keep this up in some form or another.

we celebrate carnaval over here and we dress up and paint our faces..I started painting myself at the age of 18 years and only painted 3 days a year. In 2005 I saw someone facepainting using sponges for bases and ever since my painting has improved. In 2009 I bought the fantasy cats book from mark reid and a funky faces book and wanted to try even more designs and found a Dutch forum..and became adicted..a friend asked me to paint at her kids party and that was the beginning of my facepaintingadventure! I've always drawn a lot and both my parents and my sister are very creative..so it runs in the family! no art degree or anything..

Well, my grandmother was an oil painter, my mom is an art teacher and photographer/potter and I just graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts... so it definitely runs in the family.

I got into face painting because a lady down the street approached me when I was around 13 years old to help her do some face painting at an event. I've been face painting since! I actually only really got into it after I found this forum. Before that it was just something to do on the weekend... but now I'm obsessing over artycakes, glitter, new designs... THANKS GUYS!!!

I'm jealous of all the influences you all had. No one in my family had an artistic streak so when I began drawing out my favorite cartoon characters my family was pretty impressed at age 8. This continued on and it turns out I have a math learning disability which increased the artistry in my brain lol. I'm an avid reader, writer, actor, photographer,and painter. I was out of a job in 2010 and found an ad on craigslist for a job as a face painter and henna tattoo artists at a theme park. I answered the ad with no actual experience but told them I had plenty They hired me on the spot and I've been there every since. I did not realize the face painting community was so large until I looked into it. First it was finding sillyfarm and ordering pains. Then it was googling any face paint image I could to find the creator and more of their work. Then I found facepaintforum. Then I found FABAIC.

Ive never been to art school.My mother is an artist on canvas I guess I am on faces.What really inspired me was when my family visted Universal Studios and paid $15.00 to have my daughters facepainted. 4 years ago I facepainted for free and still do at a community fall festival.I then started facepainting on the kids at my daycare.This will be my 3rd year facepainting at my towns Christmas Parade i charge for this event.I just love to see a child smile when they look in the mirror when im done.I am hooked on facepainting always watching tutorials and buying fp books I guess its just a hobby I have but I just love it for some reason.

This is a very interesting post. Facepainting definitely appeals to a certain "type" doesn't it. I am now realizing that we all have more in common than facepainting. Perry... I am an opera singer. I studied with a private coach for 6 years. I do theater... sing whenever I can. I have always sketched. From a very early age, when I wanted to pass the time I would draw. As I got older and started doing theater, I became intrigued with stage makeup.
Halloween is my favorite holiday, and one year, I decided my husband and I were going to be "cats"... as in the musical. (Yes, I am a total nerd). I bought some stuff from a Halloween store to do the makeup and I used this little video from the dvd of cats where it shows the makeup being applied for a few characters. It took me about an hour and a half per face.... but I did it! I even used spirit gum to attach extra hair to our faces and cover the ears. My husband and I went to a couple of parties and people kept asking if I was a professional makeup artist. This was before I had any decent products, so this was all done with eyeliners... ect. I guess I decided at that point that I wanted to be!

Years later.... now that I am a mom of 3 under 3, facepainting is my lifeline. It's an opportunity to break away from the monotony of the day and be creative again. This forum has actually helped me through a very challenging time in life and has inspired me to keep improving and growing as an artist.


Happy Thanksgiving everyone! So thankful for all of you!

The first and only time I have had my face painted is what made me fall in love with it. I was eight and it was at Universal Studios with my parents.

I took art classes in middle and high school, up until my junior year. I fell out of love with the traditional style of art classes. Art is subjective. My high school instructor did not help either. To me, was absolutely insane and a grew to hate her more and more every day. As she was signing the academy drop papers for my junior year, she was screaming and telling me that I was going to turn work into her next year. (I really don't think she realized what she was signing)

I started doing make up professionally when I was sixteen, I never really gave any thought into painting other than thinking about taking a body painting course at the Academy of Glam in Coconut Creek, FL.

This past June, my boyfriends mom asked me to face paint at her grandsons fifth birthday party. All I had were Palmer face paints and brushes from walmart. I loved every last minute of it, and the smiles is what made it all worth while.

Here I am, nearly six months later, diving head first into this wonderful business and re-opening my own.

No art school here. Not even a class in college, where I majored in History. But I have always been an artist. Painted all the time as a kid, Cats and landscapes. Loved embroidery. Sewed. Tried and mastered any "craft" that came my way. Moved too far from the University to continue grad school after I got married, and I wanted a car, so I went to work behind the Lancome counter at the mall. Ended up loving that and stared to freelance form them as an MUA.

Art school does not always help you to put paint on people. When I was volunteering as a face painter at my kids school, the PTO sent me an art teacher (with a degree in painting!) and her advanced high school students to help. They were terrible, no other words for it, terrible face painters. People with out credentials can be great, and people with them can stink at face painting or be scared to death to touch people. The Art teacher scarcely did a person all day, and was scared to death to touch a child's face, but she praised her students for garbage, and knew so much that she never learned, nor helped her students learn how to activate the apint without totally destroying every last cake the PTO had. if that was good composition, I don't want to compose! Thank GOD these were NOT my paints!

Just like the cosmetic counter, for me in face painting, I am there to make my clients happy. Even if I were to find out that one of my best selling designs had a horrifying compostion mistake in it, I would keep selling it...as long as the kids wanted it, I'm fine with that!

like Michelle, I too used to celebrate Carnival when I grew up and lived in Germany. So costumes and facepainting has always been a normal thing, though I had never thought about doing it until about a year ago.
I have no degree in arts, though I took art classes all through my school time. I have always been very crafty, and tried out a lot of different things, from scrabbooking, to needlework (knitting, sowing, stitching), to beading, soapstone carving, pottery, tiffany- you name it, I have proppably tried it at least once. So yes, I would say I am crafty, but when it comes to the art part, not so much. I have never been particulary good at drawing or painting. But I love facepainting.
I picked up a Snazaroo starter kit, the week after Halloween last year, as I was unable to find anything good at the party store that wouldn't smear all over my daughters face. And then I remembered carnival, and that my mom used to use a waterbased make-up kit (Superstar paints, if I remember right) to paint me and my siblings for that ocassion (and only that occasion) so I did a search online and found a supplier 15 min. drive from where I live. I went and got the paints and painted my girls and one of their freinds that afternoon for fun. What can I say, I got hooked the moment the paint touched my daughters face. The weeks following, I spend every free minute online, researching and eventually stubled onto this forum. And I read everything, soaked in as much information I could get and practiced, practiced, practiced. It is a learning process for me. I learn something new all the time and get so much inspiration here.
Only when I started facepainting, when I painted my daughter for the first time did I realise that this is what I want to do. I never thought that this would be how I earn my money. I always thought it would be something with languages ( I trained to be a foreign language coresspondant then after I was done had my girls and stayed home with them)
Yet here I am, painting faces and loving it... and earning money doing so.
Sometimes it bothers me a little that I am not better at drawing, as I have vivid imagination and my head often overflows with ideas, and when I try putting them on paper it just doesn't work out.

My educational background is a little in vocal music, and my degree is in speech and language pathology, with no art classes (beyond art appreciation or classical-renaissance survey, etc) other than in voice... That said, I have always had a bit of an artistic bent- I've figured I'm either a very scientific artist or an artistic scientist, not sure which one. My hobbies have always veered toward artistic and my career/education choices have often gone more the way of science.
I have been a hobby painter (acrylic on canvas mostly) for years, and have dabbled a bit in pastels and charcoal. Arts are something I have always picked up by "feel,"- even with singing and having some formal training, my tendency is to understand the value of a piece intuitively, long before I can get my mind around the technical aspects of it. I can't always tell you why I like it or don't like it until I get to analyzing it, then for instance with a piece I don't care for, I will often find on analysis something that is unbalanced or under developed (this is referring to music but I know similar concepts apply to other arts as well).
When I get to where I have some free time in my life (has anyone gotten to that point???) then I would greatly enjoy taking some art classes and learn more about the technical aspects of visual arts as well.
I caught the FP bug a little over a year ago when my company (I work for a nursing school) decided to do a kind of carnival thing for the alumni and wanted to have face painting. I had done a very little bit of face painting a couple of years before at a church carnival, using the cheap-o face paints you can get from wal-mart and really was not impressed. When my work started talking about doing the same thing and knew I had done a little face painting so was going to have me do that, and I knew there had to be something better in the way of supplies. I knew that I couldn't get anywhere near the kind of quality of lines with that cheap stuff that I got on canvas with my acrylics, but obviously didn't want to use acrylics on kids faces! So I got to researching for better paints and stumbled upon this whole world of art and entertainment- and was hooked. now I spend all my spare time doing this kind of thing (engaging in chat/forums) and practicing with my DFX on my arms and legs!

Wow! Everyone has such cool stories. Mine is pretty dry. I've always been an artist. I took private lessons as a kid, then later an advanced 4 year course in High School that would get me a head start in College. I got a job as a face painter at a theme park. (Which Sam later joined!) I was a Freshmen in a Junior art class. Once I finished all my art classes in College by my Sophomore year, I dropped out. I felt like a Fine Arts degree was useless and experience was relevant. I decided I wanted to be a free lance and body artist. I've got a long way to go, but so far its been great.