Clowns to Hire
Glossary

Face painting

Face painting is the colorful decoration of a person's face for artistic and performance purposes. For clowns and circus performers, face painting is an essential part of costume, character, and act design that transforms their look while conveying humor, emotion, or spectacle.

Definition and Purpose

Face painting for clowns refers to the application of specialized theatrical makeup and paints onto the face and neck to create dramatic, stylized designs and patterns that complement a clown's costume and support their comedic persona or circus act.

Common clown face painting methods utilize basics like thick white foundation, red ball nose prosthetics, vivid lip coloring, dark eyebrow emphasis, and water-activated paints to craft motifs like stars, hearts, flowers that visually tell jokes or highlight theatrical illusion. Complex, artistic designs demonstrate a clown's creativity and technical skill while meeting a performer's functional needs for versatile facial expressions, sweat resistance, and visibility in big top spaces.

Essentially, a clown's colorful face becomes their canvass to delightfully enhance features, enable distinct sight-reading for audiences, project playful personas more effectively on stage through symbolic markings, and downright spur smiles.

History and Origins

The history of face painting intertwines with the origins of clowning itself. Face coverings and masks made of wood, clay, or cloth were used in ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman theater, like ribbon-adorned masks in Italian Commedia dell’arte performances which influenced early circus clowns.

As professional clowning emerged as specialty entertainment in 18th century Europe, pioneers like Grimaldi used rudimentary makeup of powder, cork, and red cheeks to create an iconic appearance and define the “clown” archetype recognized today. Advancements let clowns utilize versatile face paints to craft increasingly elaborate, symbolic designs.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries marked the golden age of circus clowns and painted faces. Famous names like Emmett Kelly and Otto Griebling developed signature iconic makeups and "the tramp" and "the sad clown" archetypes reliant on nuanced facial paint patterns to portray comedic characters and personalities for audiences to connect with, evolving clown face painting complexity and storytelling capacity.

Influential Figures

  • Emmett Kelly  - His famously subtle design with a scruffy beard, exaggerated frown and teardrops conveyed the persona of a depression-era downtrodden tramp clown, contrasting with lively physical comedy for bittersweet pathos.

  • Otto Griebling  - “Joey the Clown” performed as New York’s Madison Square Garden as head clown for decades, wearing a signature face motif with bold triangular eyes, thick eyebrows, and dual red smiles to showcase mischievous joy.

Modern clowns continue using classic greasepaint while expanding painting techniques. Some employ stylized abstract facades signaling alter egos. Other circus performers like mimes utilize neutral face paints supporting physical illusion. Themed designs help clowns inhabit roles and storylines, saddling up beside cowpoke rodeo clowns. Classic sad or happy clown archetypes live on through intricate, personalized painted expressions, enabling versatile theatricality.

Methods and Techniques

Clowns use flexible, sweat-proof face paints, allowing dynamic movement and longevity under hot stage lights. Thick, drying liquid foundations like clown white provide opaque blank canvases without need for continual touch-ups mid-act. Water-activated paints mixed into custom palettes allow smooth application of classic elements like stars, petal flowers, or colorful teardrops in limitless varieties matching unique costumes.

Some best practices include:

Thick White Foundation

  • Slowly paint the entire face, leaving mouth/eye areas slightly more sheer for mobility

  • Set makeup by powdering after drying for sweat resistance

Nose Prosthetic

  • Apply specialty red ball nose form securely with medical adhesive

  • Blend edges with skin-tone grease paints

Dark Eye/Lip Emphasis

  • Heavily outline the eyes and mouth with black or blue paint crayons before face painting

Symmetrical Fanciful Designs

  • Draw or trace biblical feathered wings, flower bouquet displays that visually balance

Water-activated paint palettes allow blending any hue. Clowns might complement picasso-esque abstract makeup with wildly colored shapes or opt for precise delicate paisleys suiting an aloof persona. Experimenting with optical illusions like offset facial planes also proves popular. The possibilities stay vast as individual clowns craft ever-more complexity to flex their artistic flair.

Classic Patterns

  • Polka dots

  • Rainbows

  • Heart cheeks

  • Shining stars around the eyes

  • Dramatic lightning bolts

Conclusion

From ancient masks to Griebling’s grin, the history of clown face painting reveals an art form growing more versatile and integral for circus comedy acts. Once simple foundations now provide limitless magical canvasses for conveying spectacle. Whether crafting sad frowns, silly smiles, or illusionary skewed visages, a clown’s painted face ultimately aids storytelling and comedy with fantastical, theatrical charm every audience intuitively recognizes.