In this webinar, learn how to dress it up with tribals with Frida Haas.

Design #1

Right now I'm just grabbing a sponge and I'm getting a medium gray that I'm gonna start [the base] with. This is gonna be pretty quick. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on the background. However you paint your wolf, that's how you would probably start this design. I'm just gonna show you how you then can spin it a little bit and give it a different feeling, different flair. After [the base], I pop in a little bit of white right on the eyebrow.

I'm going in with a bit of a black powder from Elisa Griffith with a brush that’s also from Elisa Griffith and I'm just gonna do a little bit of a quick shape. I'm just gonna pop in a little bit of shadows in the inner ear , top of the head, right there on the muzzle area, a little right in the corner.

When I do a wolf nose, I like to do it a little bit underneath the nose because the nose and the mouth on a wolf are very close to each other so that when you pull in the mouth, you're kinda force shortening that face a little bit.

And then I usually work from the top down. I'm gonna start at the very top here. Tribals are a balance of positive and negative line works. Using a Loew-Cornell #3 Round Brush, I'm gonna come in and do a little bit of a circle shape right there [on the forehead] and then a few little dagger strokes. This is basically dagger strokes the whole time. You're doing thin to thick to thin, all the strokes you do.

From here, I'm gonna pull a little bit of an angry eyebrow eye, keeping these lines symmetrical. And then I'm gonna use the shapes I created in my base. It's always gonna be flow lines that I use. I'm gonna come around [the eye], keeping that negative space, and then I wanna pull a few more little daggers this way (downwards).

Do the top lip. I lay my brush down sort of in a straight line and when I do a muzzle for a dog or a wolf, I try to do it in a little bit more of a square shape than round. So we're gonna go up, straight up and then off towards the eye right here and then come down (from the inner corner of the eye), meet those a little bit, create another little line to connect. Whenever you do two lines and you connect them with this little bridge (little line), you instantly get a tribal feel to your design.

[For the mouth], I'm just gonna go a little bit on the underneath [of the lip]. I'm not gonna fill in the whole lip because I wanna put in a fang.

Design #2

This is just a super, super quick base. I'm using a Kraze White for this. I'm pulling in paint fast and furious 'cause I'm not trying to be perfect.

When I do a skull, I like to have fun with color so I do this all the time when I'm painting kids. I kinda look at what they're wearing and instead of going straight in with black for my skull, I'll pop in a color in the base areas. So right here (at the top) where I know I'm gonna have a bit of a shadow, instead of going in with a black I'm gonna pop a little bit of color there. I’m using this Fusion Leanne's Vivid Rainbow Petal Palette. So I'll go in to the little divot we have right there, I'll pop a color there, and [in the shadow areas].

I'm gonna do black with my line work so there'll be tons of black in this design anyway. All my line work in this design is gonna have that tribal feel to it. So I'm gonna go in and pull an angry eyebrow. And I like to just kind of see how things flow and have fun with my lines. I'm gonna come up [on the temple] 'cause this is coming in like this, I feel like this will meet right there fairly nicely, (forming the eyebrow bone).

This [on the forehead] has a bit of a round feel to it so I'm gonna come in and then continue the shapes and the feel of those shapes. I'm gonna do another little round shape back this way [in the far corner of the eye], connect with that bridge I was talking about. Let's spin off with this line we have right there already.

And then I try to avoid a lot of black if I can around the mouth area because in a minute, the kids get messy. It's just everywhere and I feel they get less use of their design. I'm gonna just suggest these teeth, probably not much more than that. And I think we need a little bit of a nose action on this and it's gonna be done too.

Design #3

So this is a snake that I would do on a forehead but it works really well on an arm as well. I'll just do a simple trailing down the arm and I always start with the head because once I know where the head is, then I know where the rest of the body is. I’m using a Blazin Brush ¾” Flat.

I put in a little bit of a lighter green right there (for the inside of the mouth) and then I'm gonna put in the bottom jaw. So that's my snake head to begin with. I'm gonna fill that in and then back here comes the neck. I'm gonna scoop around. This paint is from the Kraze Splash Split Cake Palette.

I'm gonna put in an eye. One thing with snakes is that their eyes are kinda close to the front of their faces. You wanna put the eye more towards the front of the nose. They don't have a big, long snout. Their eyes are much further to the front of their nose.

Then I usually do this little angry eyebrow. And the face, I'm gonna just keep to how I would normally paint a snake and then the body is gonna have my tribals.

Now we can have some fun. We have this whole long body and we can just start plotting tribals all the way along. I am just gonna freehand it and see what happens. So I'm gonna come right here where it kinda bends. It's in sort of a nice, natural place to put a circle. Then I can follow the edge of the ridge of this snake's back, down. This will be a fun place to put some things.

What I try to think of if I was doing something long like this is that you have some areas of focal, and then you have some areas so you just tie everything together instead of [everything being a focal point.]

I'm going in with the same green out of this Kraze palette but I was kinda mixing up the two lighter colors right now and sort of giving it a few flow lines.

Design #4

It's kind of the same thing again where you pick where you want your main elements to be and then just doing lines to tie things together for speed, but also simplicity and kind of keeping things straight in your head because the scary thing about tribals is that it can just get overwhelming and you kind of just start it and then you don't really know where to go. I would probably do some one stroke first to give myself an idea of where things are gonna fall and pick a color.

So I will probably do something maybe a little bit more asymmetrical instead of completely symmetrical. Let's just start with laying down lines and seeing what happens. I'm not gonna spend too much time on it. I'm gonna pick up a couple of different colors to work with.

And I will start over here (on one side of the mask) and sort of pick a focal point of where things are gonna go so let's start with a long line. I'm kind of just playing with it right now. Right here [under the corner of my eye], things got a little bit close. Perfect place to put that little bridge I was talking about and then I'm gonna pull up. Keep creating those spaces. They don't quite touch but they do float to each other.

I do wanna create something up here. So my background is kind of there for interest but I don't really lock myself into it. If it helps me, I use it but I'm not tying myself to it too much. It's there for if I need it, but it helps.

So I'm gonna go on the other side. I might come back here (the previous side) but this will definitely be my side that's gonna have the most interest because that's the thing with tribals that I feel like these are covering the whole face with it, it becomes a lot.

With masks, we tend to think that everything is covering all this and if you wanted to tie this together more, I would do a gold shimmer along here if you wanted to create a true mask.

It's not perfect but it's what we ended up with. Glitter makes everything better so you smash, with a bunch of chunky glitter right through here and a little bit of chunky glitter right through there and it might look pretty cool. So there's some fun things going on in here, I wanna say.

Products Mentioned in the Webinar:

Elisa Griffith Color Me Pro Powder - Blackness
Elisa Griffith Brush
Loew-Cornell #3 Round Brush
Loew-Cornell #1 Round Brush
Kraze FX White
Fusion FX Leanne's Vivid Rainbow Petal Palette
Blazin Brush Flat - 3/4"
Kraze FX Splash 12 One Stroke Split Cake Palette

If you missed the live webinar, you can watch it now in the video above or later at our YouTube channel. Thank you, Frida, for sharing your talents with us! Thank you to everyone who tuned in to the webinar. Click here to know our upcoming webinars.