Facepainting class and Zombie crawl

The world's champion face painters were in Austin this weekend teaching a face painting seminar! I didn't find out about it until the day before the class, so it was a last-minute decision to go. The teachers were Nick and Brian Wolfe, arguably THE most famous face painters in the world...there are books published by them and a product line named after them. They won the world championship title this last year at the world's largest face painting competition, held in Austria and drawing 20,000 people each year. If you haven't discovered from the pictures yet, these guys specialize in monster painting and gory special effects. They are often called the 'Monster Kings'. I don't have much experience painting this type of stuff, so it was was very educational.

I was eager at the chance to go learn from them, so Saturday morning was a flurry of activity to get out the door and arrive at class on time. The class was A-MAZ-ING! It was expensive, but definately worth every dollar. Ican't wait to attend more classes (whenver they come aroudn this way again....not likely to happen for a year or two). They taught how to use anatomy to the advantage of the design, focusing on skeletal and muscle structure in particular. The skeleton pattern they taught really improved on my own design layout. They also taught realistic shading and how to use advanced shading in order to create the optical illusion of depth. It was SO neat to learn all this theory! How frustrating for Brian and Nick to be teaching the very basics of face painting when they are accustomed to created the most advanced patterns...

My first attempt at painting a skull face

Then they taught the generic boy face for birthday parties. The neat thing is that the same basic layout can be used for 15 faces, the only different element is in the application of the black. We made mummies, werewolfs, vampires, demons, devils, lizard monsters, flames, etc. It was really fun. They also taught how to paint horns that look 3-D and how to add proper shadowing so they 'pop out' of the skin. Very cool!

15 Face paint patterns using the same background

I loved the small class size- only 10 people. It made for intimate lessons where they could focus on each students questions and help them improve weak spots. It was very valuable. They showed me how to do improve my own patterns. The patterns were much faster to paint after applying Brian's tips.

After the class was over we all dressed up and were painted as zombies for a 'Zombie crawl' that night. Now I can say that I was painted by the world's best face painters! They had to go quickly to get everyone painted since we were supposed to meet others at the Driskell Hotel at a certain time.

My 5-minute zombie face paint

Nick Wolfe, me, Brian Wolfe

 They painted a zombie bite on one the girls...it looked so real, it was amazing!

Detailed zombie bite- check out the veins!

Decaying zombie face paint pattern

 Another really neat face was one where the muscles were exposed and the skin was being drawn tightly over the muscle tissue. It was incredible to watch this transformation happen, and I learned SO much from this one pattern.

Exposed muscle and wound face paint pattern

We drove to Austin's 6th Street and walked through the crowds, acting like zombies and lurching as we walked. 


It was SO fun to see the variety of reactions! There were some people who've watched too many horror movies, these people would scream and run away (kind of fun when these people were huge guys). Some people would grin and say we looked awesome, these people would run up and take pictures. Some people were caught off-guard, and they would jump and make a quick shriek  before moving on. Some people thought it looked really neat, and would tell us they thought it was awesome. 


The most unexpected reactions were from people who evidently are attracted zombies....I had a dozen men approach me throughout the night, offering to buy me a drink (I told them I don't drink alcohol -you know, the whole sober Mormon thing- so they offered to buy dinner instead), asking for an 'undead'  kiss, asking if they can accompany me for the night, or  asking me to bite their arm like a zombie. That was all quite unexpected.


I was surprised with these offers and just blew them a kiss and walked on quickly. (For those of  you who are not regular readers, you should know I am VERY happily married to a romantic heart-throb and I have zero interest in flirting with college kids. These interactions were difficult for me to brush off because in my heart I just wanted to go home and be with my own sweetheart.)


I think if I hadn't been painted, I would have blended in with the masses of bar-hoppers and never gotten a second glance from anyone. It's ironic that being an ugly zombie drew so much romantic attention.

Our zombie squad

We went out to eat at the Iron Cactus and stopped for a bit at a couple of night clubs when the door men would ask us to come inside and make the club more fun by dancing there for a little while. One club put on 'Thriller' music and had us all dance on the bar...I've never danced on a bar before (honestly, I've never even stepped into a bar until today!). When the DJ asked our group to dance, I tried to melt into the back wall of the bar, but Nick and Brian picked me up and placed me on the bar before I could sneak away. Yikes! 

I was particularly thankful for my face of makeup that gave me anonymity. My dance moves were pathetic and Thriller is SO long. My moves were all exhausted very quickly. I know we all looked awful up there, but what else can a zombie do?

We lurched down to Esther's Follies and plastered ourselves on the huge windows that face the street. This was pretty fun, but the theater has a large water pipe evidently designed for getting rid of theater-crashers.. They pulled a switch and drenched us with water so we would move on. It was pretty funny, but a bit cold.

I finally came home and went to bed at 2 am....I'm not accustomed to late nights like that, so I was really glad to be home again.

I learned so much and was on a creative 'high' that entire day. The class was 7 hours long, so there was a lot of material covered. I really wish I could have attended the second day of classes, but they were held on Sunday. It was very hard for me to opt out of the rest of the seminar. I just couldn't reconcile Sabbath worship with face painting classes...no matter how I looked at it, it wasn't a way to keep the Sabbath day holy. 

It was so hard to focus at church that day...I kept wondering what everyone else was learning, and it was very difficult for me to not feel sad about missing this gold-mine of knowledge. -sigh- I know it was the right thing to go to church instead of this seminar, and I really do believe I'll be blessed for that choice. I think it was a test for me....the scripture came to my mind, "No man can serve two masters, You cannot serve God and mammon". I had to choose, and God always wins.

See some of my face paint ideas here and here and try here. For an awesome Halloween time-lapse video of a skull morphed with a butterfly, click here.