We were cat-sitting this week, so I thought a Sneakadoodle design of a fireman rescuing a cat from a tree would be appropriate. I hope you enjoy having some cartooning fun with this design for your fans of emergency personnel.

Materials

• Paradise Amazon green face paint
• Paradise lime green face paint
• TAG skintone palette
• Paradise red face paint
• Paradise light brown face paint
• Paradise yellow face paint
• Paradise light blue face paint
• Paradise orange face paint
• Paradise silver face paint
• Diamond FX white face paint
• Diamond FX black face paint
• #5 round brush
• #1 round brush
• Sponge

Tutorial

1. Begin by using some of your Diamond FX white (or another white) and your small round brush to sketch your outline. Lisa Joy Young suggests using white, because it’s easy to paint over the white. The fireman will be upside down coming out of the hairline to one side of the forehead.

On the other side of the face, draw a tree trunk which stretches around the eye. Place a small cat outline at the base.

2. Sponge a little light blue around the fireman and across the forehead so that it will be behind your tree leaves.

3. You’ll use your #5 round brush for most of the colored areas. I started with the white for the eyes and then added the face from the TAG skin tone palette. It’s easiest if you paint in the light colors first, like the skin tone and silver, and then fill in around them with the darker colors, like the red for the fireman’s helmet.

On the other side of the design, begin by painting the tree trunk with your #5 round and then add the tree leaves with first the lime green and then the darker green over the top.

4. After all of your colored sections are in, you can begin outlining with the black and your #1 round brush. It’s during the outlines that the design comes alive and begins to look like a cartoon. For a facial expression, I chose to make my fireman surprised that the cat was no longer in the tree with him, but instead was safely on the ground.

5. Once the outlines are in, you’re almost finished. Just add a few highlights with the #1 round brush and your white. It’s best to use a face paint like Diamond FX or Wolfe white for this, because as wax-based paints, they cover and create line work more easily than paints that are glycerin-based.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial, and that it appeals to the kids or adults in your line this week.

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.