You’re setting up at a large festival, and you notice that you’re not the only face painter who will be working there for the day. This does happen occasionally, and there’s nothing wrong with it if the event is large enough to provide plenty of customers for both face painters. But even with lots of potential customers wandering around, you’ll want something unique which will draw people to your tent. Personalized graffiti arm art is a great option for you. It’s easy to do, and teens particularly love it.

Materials

• Kryvaline split cake Summer Sunset
• #2 round brush
• Diamond FX white face paint
• Diamond FX black face paint
• Translucent white glitter
• Sponge

Tutorial

1. For this design, I used three colors from half of the Kryvaline split cake Summer Sunset. You could use half of any split cake you like as well. Start by taking half of a round sponge and spritzing one end of the curved side. Also spritz the end of the split cake which you’ll be using and rub the sponge back and forth to load it. Starting at the bottom of the name, dab general shapes for each letter, allowing the bottom ones to overlap the upper ones slightly. If you have to, since you’ll be spelling backwards as you go up, it may be best to paint the name on your hand for reference so you don’t make mistakes as you go.

2. Using the Diamond FX black and a #2 round brush, create an outline for each letter, again beginning at the bottom and working up. I chose a very simple graffiti style of lettering for this design without much exaggeration. The more you try out these designs, the more you’ll have fun experimenting with different fonts which do have more exaggerated letters.

3. After you finish your black outline, use the same round brush and Diamond FX white to put highlights on the letters. While you’re doing this, keep in mind that your highlights should be on the same sides of the letters. For mine, I chose the top and right hand side for highlights, as though my light source was coming from the top and right.

4. As a final step, I added white dots and starbursts around the name, but you could also include textures with stencils or gems to add even more value to the design.

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