Our family members are firm Star Wars fans. (My husband saw the second Star Wars movie about a dozen times in the theater when it first came out.) So we’ve been looking forward to the latest and greatest in the Star Wars saga to be released this December. In celebration of it almost being here (and I can hardly wait!), I’m sharing a droid-inspired mask for you today.
Materials
• Paradise black
• TAG pearl black
• Diamond FX or Wolfe black
• Diamond FX or Wolfe white
• Paradise silver
• Paradise metallic/pearl light blue
• 1/2-inch flat brush
• Small filbert brush
• #2 round brush
• #5 round brush
• Sponge
• Stencils
Tutorial
Load your 1/2-inch flat brush with a combination of Paradise black and TAG pearl black to create the background shape for the droid. At this step, leave the eyes unpainted and pay special attention to the outline shape of the droid.
With the small filbert, paint nickel-sized silver circles over the eyelids and fill in the area around them with black.
Use your #1 or #2 round brush to make black circles within the silver circles and add two vertical lines within each of them.
Sponge a combination of silver and metallic light blue over the highlighted/reflective areas of the mask, such as the side of the forehead and the area on the cheekbones and nose.
Use the #2 or #5 round brush and Diamond FX or Wolfe black to outline the interior shapes of the droid. If you have a stencil which looks mechanical (the BAM stencils work well for this), sponge black over the top of it on the forehead and cheek area.
Load your small round brush, this time with white, and add highlights to the mask on the forehead and the lower mask. Also load your flat brush with metallic light blue and touch up some areas, such as the upper half of the droid mouth and lower mask to make sure they have a strong reflective quality to them. The mouth area looks like a type of grill, so use the pearl blue to make the top half reflective, and draw the black lines down through it for shadows.
Your droid-inspired mask is finished. The first few times through, it will take a little longer to create this mask, but once you’ve practiced it and know the placement of the lines of the mask without checking your reference, you should be able to paint it fairly rapidly.
Beth MacKinney is the owner of and primary face painter for Face Paint Pizzazz, and she services Elgin, Illinois and the NW Chicago suburbs as well as the eastern suburbs of Rockford. Stop by Facepaint.com to check out her other face painting blog posts and tutorials.