Now Painting Reptiles!

Last weekend I can say I experienced a "first" in my 17 years as a face painter...I painted on an alligator!  

This was at a birthday party for an adorable 4 year old girl, which was complete with a bouncy house and a petting zoo!  Usually I'm too busy painting to see the animals when there is a petting zoo, so it was pretty cool to see this woman walking up to me with an alligator.

I've held one before when we visited the Everglades years ago, only that one was much smaller!  I've always loved reptiles and wasn't as scared of my hand being eaten as I probably should have.  Ha... well, I can say that this alligator was without a doubt the most perfectly still customer I've ever painted, which fully made up for his dry skin.  ;-)

 

So, in case anyone is wondering, I can now confirm that Kryolan and Wolfe paints go on with ease on reptile skin.  ;-)  Of course, now every time I see these photos I'm critiquing the dragonfly like crazy. I forgot the antennae, the line weights and proportions are all off, and I'd never normally post a photo of this design...but I guess you could say I was a little nervous to stretch the wings around too close to those choppers or to lengthen the tail any farther down his nose! I did try a little dashed "flying line" coming out the bottom which you can see faintly goes down by his teeth!  And if you can't tell, yes, there's glitter on there too.

It was just so fun, I wish I could have spent more time and given the entire alligator a body painting.  But, of course, my clients pay me to paint their guests, not their other entertainers, right? ;-)  Thank you very much to the birthday girl's very sweet mom for inviting me to paint and for the good humored petting zoo woman for the fun "experience!"