How do you know when you're ready?

Hi everyone!
I've only been doing this for a week but just wondered - how do you know when you're ready for your first gig? I need a lot of practice still, especially on linework, but I really want to see if I can convince any of my friends to let me paint their kids for practice. I'd paint my own but she's a little bit little still
Thanks!
Oh here is a pic of a butterfly I did tonight. I'm loving Lisa Joy Young's tutorials!

i love the design

if you watch the lisa joy young tutorials she recommend that you should be able to paint 10 faces in 1/2hr if you cant then your not ready she also said you need to be able to have few design ready in your head so you dont waste time when comes to painting the child

for person who's only been painting for week it looks awesome

I did relatives parties first and when I could manage that in the amount of time i.e.5 to 8 mins then per child back then and it looked ok. passed the what is it test. I took the plunge.

If you can paint a "good" full face in 5 minutes or less, then you should be ready.

The butterfly is gorgeous! Did it take you around 2 minutes?

No, it took the best part of 10 minutes to do the butterfly. I'll keep practising and working on getting faster. Thanks everyone!

WOW that is a lovely butterfly for 1 week on the job..I look forward to seeing your progress,,your gonna rock it..we believe in you..Go for it.

I think you just have to jump in. Yes, it's good to get your times up but you can really only do that with practice. I did neighborhood kids but it was still only about 20 designs. You should be practicing every night on waxed paper or your arm to get the line work practice in. Do 10 of each design to get the "muscle memory" up so you don't have to look at a picture...that will naturally bring your time up.

But honestly, I wasn't ready for the party thing until I had done a two-day 12-hour-a-day festival. It was a baptism by fire but I had good response from the public for my designs and a long line but I was so much better by the end that I wasn't scared anymore. It also paid for a lot of my supplies that I'm still using today like my tent, camp kitchen, chairs, etc.

When you do paint your neighbors or friends go in with specific designs in mind and take lots of pictures. Your friends have to understand you are doing this to build your business and the pictures will be used for that purpose. Don't let the kids or the mom's choose or tell you what you want. You need those first designs to build your cards, ads & website with and you need the popular ones for your board.

You need a spiderman, tiger, batman, skull, full butterfly, princess crown/mask, kitty and puppy and then I would recommend smaller designs of shark, spider, scorpion, flower, small butterfly (like your picture), dolphin, blossoms...

There is a whole thread about the most popular designs somewhere here on the forum.

D.

I did everything wrong from the beginning because I had a teacher that barely knew the industry. She taught me everything I needed to know(haha) in 1 afternoon & off to my 1st festival I went

I think I was face painting & clowning for a year before I even started to be ready.

My advice is get some free practice off of friends & family. Get lots of pics.

I am still very new, at first I started by doing parties for friends and they bought me supplies instead of paying...this let me take my time for faces and was pretty low stress. From that I started to get paying gigs from word of mouth and I bring my travel kit with me any time I bring my daughter to a playdate the kids love to be painted and I love all the practice. Your butterfly is beautiful - I think pretty is better than speedy at least when starting. Soon you will know when you are ready to jump in. I don't think I would do a festival just yet but I was happy to do the kids Christmas party at work. Something I learned from interpreting - the more you do, the more you learn and everything is prep.

10 faces in half an hour?? Wow... that's fast painting.

To go pro, realistically, painting a full face in 5-7 minutes in reasonable. That works out to maybe 10-12 an hour. Which isn't bad.

15-20 per hour is fast. If you are able to do 3-4 minute faces you could possibly get there as a lot of kids will pick fast designs.

I've been doing this a LONG time and while I can do nice butterflies in less than 148 seconds they aren't my regular stuff. I have different displays for different speed levels - one is all under 4 minutes and the other is everything up to 7 or so (the monsters with teeth etc.)

If you can do a decent butterfly, kitty, puppy, tiger in an average of 6 minutes |(10 per hour) you are ready to charge people.

If however you are taking 15 minutes or more per face... I'd say practise for a bit more before you start charging. For your own benefit as well as the customer's.

Shannon...perfect post...I totally agree...10 faces an hour is a good jumping off point. I can't expand on your thoughts any further...10 in 1/2 an hour is unreasonable and unrealistic in the real world.

Depends what you want to be ready for? I guess I was lucky as I had a henna background and had done tonnes of super busy festivals and markets and kinda tacked facepainting on when I moved to the country. So I jumped right in. I look back at the pics (only 15 months ago) and CRINGE but the public loved it, paid for it and kept coming back for more. I built the party and corporate bookings from exposure of being at markets. And the more I painted the quicker and better I got - I often baffle at some of the amazing artists on here that are waiting and waiting to go pro..spending tonnes of coin on supplies when you are already pretty damn good!! maybe a week in is too early but tell EVERYONE what you do and who know..opportunity may knock. This is art..its never perfect and if we wait till its perfect we'll be waiting forever.. the difference between a 5 minute face and a 20 minute face is the ability to tell yourself STOP!!

JBM!

JBM wrote:.. the difference between a 5 minute face and a 20 minute face is the ability to tell yourself STOP!!

OMG... have you got that right!

Just to set something straight, Lisa Joy Yound didn't say 10 faces in half an hour, she said 1- faces in one to two hours...