Little by little, the weather is warming up, and pretty soon even the sunshine will be putting on its sunglasses and joining us at the beach. In the northern US, we’ll have to content ourselves with this sunny one-stroke version for a little while longer.

Materials

• TAG Dragon or Flame split cake
• TAG skin tone palette
• TAG yellow face paint
• #5 round brush
• #1 round brush
• 1/2 inch flat brush
• Diamond FX white
• Diamond FX black

Instructions

1. Use your #5 round brush and the TAG yellow face paint to make a round circle on the cheek.

2. Load your 1/2 inch flat brush from your Dragon or Flame TAG split cake. The only difference between these two split cakes is that Dragon has black, so if you don’t want to accidentally pick up a little of the black, use Flame instead, but either of these will work for this design. Lining up the edge of the flat brush with the edge of the sun, press down and twist the brush while moving away from the round sun. Twisting the brush and lifting will give you a nice point on the rays of your sunshine.

3. Continue to make rays around the entire circle.

4. Add a smile and two eyes on the face of the sun with your Diamond FX black and your #1 round brush. If you were to do this design during an event with a line, you could stop right now and be finished.

5. If you’re at an event for which you have more time to work, you can outline the rays of the sun by using Diamond FX black and your #1 round brush.

6. If you want to have a little fun with your sun, consider giving it some sunglasses by drawing a slightly curved line across right above the eyes and adding two curved shapes which hang from the line. Fill these in to create your sunglasses. As a final step, add white highlights, which will make the design pop.

Beth MacKinney is the owner and primary artist of Face Paint Pizzazz in the NW Chicago suburbs. She also writes for Examiner.com as the Chicago Face Painting Examiner.