Joker Make up

In a few days I’ll be attending a prestigious event. My nephew Rafferty is turning 4 years old. I’ve been indoctrinating him over the last year or two and he’s now thoroughly into superheroes. A while back his Mum asked me (with a raised eyebrow) who this “Bruce Wayne” person was that Rafferty kept talking about. I knew then that my work was done. He was hooked.

So the theme of Raffy’s party could only be one thing. Everyone is coming as Superheroes and Supervillains. I asked Raffy what he thought I should be, and he said with no doubt that I should come as the Joker. Being a huge nerdy I wanted to go as something a bit more obscure, but Raffy’s wish was my command. So I sent off for the facepaint and a prison inmate uniform. The uniform was rather bright and clean, but a muddy puddle soon took care of that. Now it’s sufficiently grubby and gross. I also stencilled in the word “Gotham” above the preprinted letters “City Jail” to give it that nice extra detail.

Now for the face. Using the cheapest nastiest facepaint I could find I thought I’d have a test run before the party. I got a bit freaked out as I worked, as I started to look a wee bit creepy. I shaded in the natural lines in my face so that when I grinned the shadows fell in the right places. White highlights really worked to make certain areas pop out and seemed to actually lengthen my nose somehow. The wonders of makeup. And this was the final result.

Not too shabby. But I may have gone too far. The 4 year olds are going to CRY!

But it was interesting to see how my illustration skills transferred onto facepainting. Using the simple set of paints I was partially able to mimic the lighting effects that I use in Zbrush all the time.