Halloween Face Painting

Dressing up for Halloween doesn’t have to take a lot of time or effort. These ideas work great for last-minute costume party invites, for adults who wish to spice up their treat-or-treating chaperoning or anyone who is trying to do dress-up on a tight budget. All three make-up schemes below work great when worn with formal wear (tuxedos/recycled bridesmaids gowns), funky items bought at the thrift store or even an all-black ensemble from your own wardrobe. You can add wigs or hats as a way of dealing with your hair, or wear something with a hood.

The Skull

A full or half-face skeleton is very easy to do. You will need white and black for a full face. Having a bit of red, blue or green is good for the half face. You will also want a picture of a skull to help guide you. The whole face is covered with a white base to start. Then to accentuate bone structure, you use black to shadow your temples, hollow around the eyes and color the tip of your nose. The area around the mouth and hollows under the cheekbones also get blacked out to form the lower jaw. You can either carefully paint and leave bits of white to be the teeth, or you can paint white on top of the black again to make them afterward. For skeleton costumes ideas you might like to take an idea from the movie The Corpse Bride.

For the half face skull, it helps to draw an irregular line down the center of the face before you start your white base using a black eye pencil. The detailing is the same as the full skull only you leave one side of your face clean. Adding a thin edge of red to the skull side of the center line makes it look more like the skin was torn off. A touch of blue or green on the “flesh” side of the line suggests rotting.