I had a Fantastic weekend. Funning from one activity to the next.

First I did FREEHAND GLITTER TATTOOS at the Town of Hempstead Animal Shelter (on people, of course), then I ran to my 2nd event of that day to draw CARICATURES at a Communion Party, a few hours to sleep and recoup, and I was out to do FACE PAINTING at a 4-year-old's Birthday Party. I had all my Supplies ready-prepared for each event, so I knew I would be prepared for everything, and I was especially thrilled that all these years of experience made me able able to switch gears for each performance successfully.

Look at the fantastic email that my Client from the Communion Party sent me. CARICATURES:

Alison I can't thank you enough for you're amazing work and for your patience with my guests. You are so accommodating and absolutely brilliant! Love your imagination ! Thank you again so much! Roxanne Thank you Roxie

Thank You Roxie for taking the time to make sure that I feel appreciated. Which I certainly do. It all feels so Wonderful.

I don't usually study Caricatures at the same time as I'm studying Face Painting, but here I am ~ It just happened.

I usually make a quick symbolic hint of features to dream up my Face Paintings. But this time, I gave a little extra effort to the face-base. Curious about what happens when I shift the iris of the eye up, down, or to the side..... so many different placements and each one hints at a different character.

These iris placements would give different expressions on different eye-bases too. That's something else I dream about. Since I am choosing just One Expression for Caricaturing the person who is sitting in front of me, it's not like tracing shapes, not like a copy machine. Each decision that I make about placement and pressure make big differences in catching that expression.

In this case, I determined that if the iris is:

high, it looks sleepy

centered, it looks suspicious

a little bit Partway at the top, it looks the way a person normally looks when s/he is just looking around.

a little bit Partway at the bottom, it looks surpised (but i think i remember that completely at the bottom is too much)

I'm a Facepainter as well as a Caricature Artist. So I am particularly interested in seeing other people's facepaintings. But it's particularly hard to Caricature people who have already been face-painted. I wish they knew to come for their Caricature Before their Facepainting.

But of course, I handle whatever comes my way. And sometimes it's people who have already been facepainted. I feel amazed that I can still do a very good job of Caricaturing them. Sometimes including the Face Painting, sometimes not including it.

But then comes the next problem with it. Especially if I'm Not impressed with the job that some other facepainter did. Because I want it to be clear when I post these photos that I did Not do that particular facepainting. You can see samples of my facepainting on the Face Painting page of this website.