Today’s question is…
What kind of body paint do you use?
I’ll share with you guys what I’ve personally used in the past and what I like, since my experience with body paint is rather limited.
1. Experience #1 – liquid latex and Mehron Fantasy FX Face Paint.
The first time I ever had to paint myself, I tried liquid latex and Mehron Fantasy FX Face Paint.
It was awful.
So here I am, basically a kid still living with my parents and I order this liquid latex – which I’d read online was great for large coverage body paint. It comes and the label is pictures of naked women. I scrape it off real quick before anybody sees! Should have been my first warning that this was not going to go as expected.
As to the Mehron Fantasy FX Face Paint – it was perfectly fine, it was not the problem here. I’d used the white before for Lulu. It was the only thing like that our local costume shop carried, so I went up there and got their green. At the con, I mixed it with a little of the white and it was, like I said, perfectly fine. Anyway….
I did all the tips that came along with the liquid latex to make it easy to put on and take off. It took forever to dry, and once it did, I discovered I really couldn’t bend my neck. The stuff on my fingers never really dried, and kept sticking together – Ash had to carry scissors with her while I wore it to cut apart my fingers, because they’d get so stuck I couldn’t break them apart.
And then taking it off? Oh my God. I sat in the tub and scrubbed and scrubbed and it hurt SO bad! I’m surprised it didn’t just rip all the hair off my arms.
And the last lovely little bit of my tale – the stupid green latex spilled in my suitcase on the way home from DragonCon. Never again.
I’m sure someone out there had a great tutorial on how to use liquid latex if you’re interested, and with some trial and error you could make it work for you… but I’m personally never touching the stuff again.
What I do now…
My next foray into bodypaint was Starfire in 2005, and I refused to touch anything that I used for Ocha again – including the Mehron, even though that had worked ok.
I decided to give Ben Nye Magicake Aqua Paints a try – and I’m a convert. I love these things. So easy to apply, even for a rookie like me, minimal staining on clothes, long lasting and easy to get off.
I use sponges to apply, and sometimes I’ll use a large, round makeup brush as well, usually for highlights.
When I first did Starfire, I wasn’t sure what orange I wanted – so I ordered multiple shades. The small size is cheap, so ordering a wide array wasn’t bank-breaking. That ended up being a great thing, because it let me layer on different colours to create shadows and highlights. I did the same thing with both Poison Ivy and Ahsoka.
Starfire was almost straight up one colour, just with some darker and light oranges mixed in for shadows and highlights. For Poison Ivy and Ahsoka, I layered colours to make my own shade all together, since no one colour was exactly right.
I’d lay down a base of one colour with my sponge, and then while still damp, started dabbing on a second colour to mix. It was a long process, but helped with a friend holding a hair dryer to the places that were finished to get them dry quicker.
Once everything was finished, I brush on a setting powder and I’m done. There are other options I’ve heard of, like barrier spray, but I have not tried them. I’ve obviously worn this outside at Dragoncon without a major problem – even after standing outside at Dragoncon for 2 hours and sweating didn’t mess it up. On something like Starfire, it does rub off a tiny bit on your clothes, places like the armpit opening and waistband – I just spot clean them and it comes right off.
Getting it all off isn’t bad at all – I just hop in the shower and scrub with soap and water til it’s all off, I enjoy seeing the weird colours of bath water I can create.
Since I originally posted this, I’ve written a second FAQ Friday on body paint – Body Paint Part 2! It’s a little more in-depth than this article was.