Some designs have more appeal for either boys or girls, but when you use humor and cartoons, you create designs that are popular for both, and generally will span age groups as well. This goofy banana was inspired by the traveling banana who photobombs our vacations and trips.
Materials
• Paradise yellow face paint
• Paradise orange face paint
• TAG orange face paint
• Paradise red face paint
• TAG light blue face paint
• TAG royal blue face paint
• Wolfe or Diamond FX black face paint
• Wolfe or Diamond FX white face paint
• #5 round brush
• Small filbert brush
• #1 round brush
• #2 round brush
Tutorial
Begin by creating your banana shape, which should extend from just above the eyebrow around to just below the corner of the mouth. I used a small filbert for this, but you could also use the #5 round.
Using white and the #5 round brush, create two eyes about two-fifths of the way down your banana shape.
Add arms with the #5 round brush, and add hands with white and the #2 round brush. Above the banana, using a #5 round brush, add some Paradise orange and TAG light blue swirls to extend the design beyond the eye. It would have looked odd to have the banana sitting on the face alone, so I felt these extra shapes were necessary for the flow of the design. (Two other great color choices for the swirls would be lavender and lime green. Your outlines would be purple and Amazon green, in that case.)
Outline your banana with the #1 round brush and your lining blacks, such as Wolfe, Diamond FX, or Global black.
Use your #1 or #2 round brush to outline the swirls above. For the light blue, use the TAG royal blue to outline. For the Paradise orange, use a combination of Paradise red and TAG orange for this. (You could substitute the TAG or Global red for outlining the orange. I tend to mix my paints anyway, and in this case I didn’t want the super-intense Paradise red to overwhelm the lighter orange swirls.)
Add white highlights, starbursts, and dots to the design to give it extra sparkle, and enjoy your goofy banana cartoon!
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. Beth also writes for Examiner.com as the Chicago Face Painting Examiner.