Sunset Face Painting Tutorial

I've always admired the landscape face paintings of other artists, so I wanted to try my own. First I search to find a decent sunset picture that had some nice contrast and color ranges in it. Here's what I choose:

My supplies and tools that I used:

Mehron Paradise Palette- light purple, purple, maroon, light pink, dark pink, yellow, orange, black, white, red, berry red
Wolfe UV palette- pink, yellow, orange
Wolfe white
Gold Grip rounds #3, #6, and Mark Reid chisel brush
High density sponges
Mama clown poof glitter

Step by Step pictures:

First, I outline the basic shapes on my face using a color that would fall in the mid to neutral range. For this, I used the light purple.

Next, I use the sponges to lay out the base colors. I start from the top of my face and work down, so i can blend them together. The paradise paints are pretty blend-able if you work them together before they dry too much.

I used the dark purple, light purple, dark pink and light pink as my primary base. For the lower half of my face I used the oranges and yellows. I was careful to avoid the areas I was going to paint black, because the black would pick up the color and be less of a solid black.

I used the edge of the sponge to create the streaking effect by quickly sweeping upward. I used #3 with red to outline where some of the clouds were going to be. I then started to create the moons by edging them in white with the #3 brush, then blending with the chisel brush.

Using the same technique of lining in white and then blending with the chisel brush by gently pulling the color away from the line, I created some clouds and the moons.

Since the palm tree was an important feature of the image, I wanted to add that next. I used the chisel brush to fill in the large black areas and then I used the #3 round to paint in the tree. The hardest part about this is having confident strokes, where it doesn't look scratchy or hesitant. That makes the painting look clean and professional.

Here is the finished palm tree. I used the chisel brush to do the dark side of the moon and to get the dark side of the clouds. The chisel brush is great because depending on the angle you use it, you can get a variety of different shapes from fat to thin lines.

I finished up the sunset area with white, neon yellow, and regular yellow. I am always looking back at the original picture trying to mimic it. Using creativity is great, but looking at real source material is better.

Next.. the most important part to any face painting, GLITTER! For this look, since I want sparkles everywhere, I am using a poof bottle or iridescent white glitter. This stuff is great to quickly cover your face, or your whole body if you are so inclined.

I went back in with a tiny bit of UV orange and added some to the top of my face in the cloud area. I just used my finger this time to blend it out. I used a little Wolfe white to touch up all the moon edges, the sunset and the cloud edges, since the Wolfe white looks brighter than the paradise white. This is how the final look turned out!