Greatest Show on Earth

Day#5 of 31 Days of Halloween: Glam Clown/Ringleader

Oooooh this is one of my favorites in the entire challenge. She’e fierce, but also…a clown…ew. Okay here we go!

This look mostly consists of body painting and shadow work. That being said, I am not primarily a body painter. So if I can do it, so can you with the right plan to get started. And guess what? HERE IT IS! Here’s what you need: Mehron Paradise Paints in black, white, and red. These are water activated and you remove them with water as well. I recommend getting the basic palette of primary colors so that you will always be able to mix up almost any color you need for other looks you may do in the future. You’ll also need some black eyeshadow.Mine is from the Saucebox Etude Palette. Include some rhinestones if you so choose, and I also included my Desio Innocent White prescription colored contacts to give my little clown some edge.

I started out with some foundation on the areas of the face I anticipated would not be covered up by paint for the most part: up to the hairline and in the center of the forehead, the bridge of the nose, the area where a mustache and beard would be if I were a dude, and using this foundation to prime generally over my eyelids, under the eyes, and the perimeter of the face. OR you could just put foundation on everywhere and wipe it away in purposeful shapes where you plan to lay down your clowny paint shapes. Set it with some kind of powder.

Now go in with your black paint and any detail brush to map out our McDonald’s inspired arches above the eyebrows. We want large arches that peak at about the center of the forehead. Also, paint on the semi-v-shaped lines under each eye. These should come to sharp points as opposed to the softer arches above the brow. The largest point stops in the center-ish area of the cheek. If you think of your face broken into horizontal sections, the largest points we want to draw under the eye should fall right at the horizontal plane between the outside edge of the nose and the outer edge of the lip. Repeat on the other eye. I also added a smaller point right under my cheekbones. To get them as symmetrical as possible, I made that end point directly down from the tail of each eyebrow. Use a brush as a guide to help you envision that imaginary line and find the placement coming down from that brown onto the cheek. This is the moment you either pray your Brow tech made your caterpillars even, or you just keep checking back and forth on each side of your face to get the peaks in generally the same spot. Most importantly, continue the line by curving the edge upward against the underside of the cheek bone, after you’ve drawn on your second smaller peak. This will help create sort of a contoured out cheek socket. If you didn’t have your McDonald’s lines, it would look almost like the top edge of a janky Bandana line covering your mouth. Visualize. Stay with me here.

The hard part is over!

Now fill in your brows with black paint. Trace along the edges on the inside (closest to the eye) of each line you just made with red paint. Make these lines thicker- use a larger brush than before. Think sort of like a comic mask when you do this. We want that dark black edge to fade into red, and you’ll shade it in with black eyeshadow after all the paint is dry. After its all said and done you should end up with a gradient from black to dark red to red fading into the under eye area that is, in my case, pretty pasty. You can highlight the area closest to the eye with a soft wash of the white paint. Once it dries you can pat it out to blend it a little better, or just use white creme paint instead of water activated for this step.

Create your red, elongated, creepy clown smile with the red paint and a couple white spots to highlight on the bottom lip and on the cupid’s bow. Give yourself a red nose and get it as perfectly round as you can. If you’d rather stick on a foam clown nose, go for it, but it might not come out quite as glam. Add a white highlight line to one side of the nose.

Now the intricate but fun part! Draw on the jester-like wings on the outer edges of the eyes and get them as symmetrical as possible. Use my photos as a reference to achieve the same shapes and placement, but keep in mind that you may need to modify it if you have a different eye shape than mine. For example, the white, neatly carved cut-crease effect I created on my eyelid with the white body paint after having outlined the crease of my eye with black paint may be ineffective or unnecessary for you if you have severely hooded eyes. In that case, you’ll want to create that cut-crease above your natural crease so that when your eye is open, you’ll still be able to see all that work. This is standard for an approach to makeup for hooded eye shapes. But anyway, I’m getting off task here. Create an elongated and downward-pulling inner tear duct line with black paint. The easiest way to do the outer shapes on the eye is to create a winged eyeliner as you normally would across the top lash line, and pull that line out further than usual, then upward making sure to taper it. Then for under the eye, make a peak under the center of each eye and think of the outer edge as a mirrored image of the upward curving winged eyeliner you just did. If this makes no sense to you, just reference the photos and think of pulling the line coming from the lower lash line downward to a tapered edge. You should have a little V shape on the outermost edge of the eyes now.

Moving on. I finished off each black peak with clear rhinestones at the points and dark-toned oval shaped ones on the inside edge of each eyebrow. Mine are from Michael’s craft store, but feel free to use any stones and eyelash glue to stick them on with. It is easiest to apply the glue to the face directly and wait for it to get tacky rather than fumbling around trying to apply the glue on the back of each stone. After that, highlight above the tail of each eyebrow with some more white paint.

Woah…that was a lot. Deep Breath. We’re almost done.

Onto the neck. Take a large body painting brush or foundation brush and create vertical lines. Start with the white lines and make them a semi-thick, starting from under your jawline and flaring out onto your chest/shoulder area. If you’re wearing this out, you may want to have a buddy help you continue this collar sort of thing all the way around the back of your neck as well. Then apply the red lines with a different brush and don’t panic if they overlap. If you’ve let the white completely dry, you shouldn’t have the overlapped area turning pink on you. Along the edges of vertical lines we created, where the two colors meet, shade outward from the overlapping point to create seam-like shadows with a small amount of black eyeshadow. It should be light handed enough and little enough product that it comes out sort of grey and not too harsh.

Lastly, go over any of the black lines with a detail brush and some more paint if they aren’t dark enough, add a top hat, and you’re a little Ringleader babe! Any hairstyle you want will look cute for this.

Congrats on making it to day 5 and I’ll catch you tomorrow for some more #31daysofhalloween!