Lion Face-Painting Instructions
Face-painting is fun for all ages and is appropriate as a party activity, for a craft-fair booth, as an educational activity or as part of a costume for Halloween or the theater. Lions and other cat-faces are good choices for boys and girls. With some basic equipment, a model to paint on and a little bit of patience, you can be on your way to creating your own pride of lions in no time.
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Things You'll Need
- Towel or smock
- Headband, ponytail holder or barrettes (optional, for long hair)
- Tissues or baby wipes
- Face paints in gold, pale yellow, rust brown and black
- Face painting brush
- Makeup sponges
Instructions
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Basic Colors
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Protect models by tying back hair and covering clothing with towels. Protect your model by covering her shoulders with a towel or smock and tying back longer hair from her face. Cleanse the model's face with a damp tissue or babywipe.
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Apply gold or yellow face paint with the makeup sponge to your model's entire face, except for a circular area surrounding the eyes and the space between the lips and the nose.
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Cover the circular area around the eyes using the makeup sponge with pale yellow paint.
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Add rust-brown or similar face paint using the sponge to give the face more dimension. Blend this paint in to the sides of the nose, cheeks and cheekbones, temples and sides of the forehead.
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Fill in the blank space between the nose and lips using your sponge with the white face paint to create the lion's muzzle. Extend this area slightly beyond the corners of the lips about 1/2 inch to 1 inch depending on the size of your model's face.
Details
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Use the face-painting brush and black paint to make the details of the nose and muzzle. Paint a black line underneath the nose and to the sides of the nostrils and a line from the center of the nose to the top of the lip. Paint the upper lip black for the lion's mouth, and at the corners of the mouth, paint inward-facing half-circles to show the outer sides of the muzzle; use the section of the face painted white as your guidelines for these half-circles. Add a few dots on each side of the white area of the muzzle.
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Imagine the shape of a cat's eye as your outline the eyes. Outline the eyes with the brush and black face paint. Encircle the eyes completely, extending the outer corners up above the cheekbones and drawing the inner corner slightly down toward the nose. Younger children might not want the paint to be close to their lash-lines; this is fine because the important part is to emphasize the shape of the eyes.
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Apply a little more pale yellow paint with the sponge to the area directly above the brows.
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Outline the bottom of the lower lip with the face painting brush and black paint to complete the lion's mouth; you can also brush a light amount of black paint to the inside of the lower lip for more detail on older children or adults.
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Results vary depending on your equipment, model and time you spend painting. Add other details to complete the face depending on the time you have or the demands of your model. Some ideas include painting on whiskers, ears or layering yellow/rust colors to give the face a "furrier" appearance.
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Tips & Warnings
Use the makeup sponge to cover broad areas of the face with paint. If you're going to be doing a lot of face painting, you will want to have several sponges to use, one for each color of paint.
If you don't have the exact face-paint colors suggested here, you can improvise with the colors that you do have. Applying the basic shapes and details are what really create your lion.
Use paint specifically designed for face-painting.
Never apply face-paints or makeup to broken or damaged skin.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Painted face girl image by il gitano from Fotolia.com makeup image by max blain from Fotolia.com eye cats image by Galyna Andrushko from Fotolia.com 2402 image by TMorgan from Fotolia.com
