At blacklight parties or events for which you want to showcase the vivid colors of the neons (which look equally beautiful under regular light), the addition of stencils will add ornate elements but keep them quick to paint. This design is inspired by the amazing Elisa Griffith, whose blacklight designs are both fun and beautiful.
Materials
• TAG neon rainbow split cake
• Wolfe dark blue
• Wolfe or Diamond FX white
• Diamond FX neon white
• Favorite ornate stencil (BAM 2002 in photo)
• Dot stencil (Lea Selley Graffiti Eyes or BAM 2031 “Dotty”)
• Sponge
• #4 round brush
• #1 round brush
Tutorial
Spritz your TAG neon rainbow split cake with a little water and load your sponge. Place the sponge on the forehead with the pink in the center at the top, and dab it in a half-circle curve, keeping the pink in the center top.
Reload the sponge if necessary, and place it over the eye with the orange in the center over the bridge of the nose. Sponge up and away over the temple so that the orange from the forehead lines up with the orange on the sponge.
Repeat on the other side and make sure there isn’t a gap in the center between the eyes which isn’t covered by orange.
Turn your sponge so that the lighter orange and yellow will be next to the pink and apply face paint from the hairline to around the outer corner of the eye. If you want, you can take it all the way in over the bridge of the nose.
Load a sponge with Wolfe dark blue, and hold your stencil carefully in place on the forehead while sponging. Make sure your sponge isn’t too wet or the face paint will bleed underneath the edges. The Wolfe blue is not going to glow, since it’s not UV sensitive, but it will create a beautiful negative space around the glow while the design is under blacklight.
Use your dot or graffiti eye stencil to make dots on the outer edge of the eyelid. You could use black for the stencil and dots as well, but I wanted to keep the colors bright under regular light as well, so I chose dark blue.
Load your #4 round brush from the pink on your rainbow split and create teardrops coming around the bottom edge of the eye as well as a few in the center under your stencil design.
Use the dark blue and your #1 round brush to outline the teardrops. This gives them a little more definition under both regular light and blacklight.
Finally, use your #1 round brush and Diamond FX neon white to add slender highlights to the center design (totally optional and you can skip this if you’re pressed for time) as well as a few dots and starbursts (again unnecessary for this design).
If you use neon lipstick so the lips glow as well, it will complete the design more, because otherwise you can’t see the lips. My model preferred to not have her lips painted so we didn’t use it for this design.
Happy painting!
Beth MacKinney is the owner of and primary face painter for Face Paint Pizzazz in the NW Chicago suburbs. Stop by Facepaint.com to check out her other face painting blog posts and tutorials. If you’re on Facebook, join the Facepaint.com Challenge Group to showcase your artwork and have a chance to win a store credit for each week’s challenge.