Luck O' the Eighties!

We are having our first snow day of the winter here in MN and I am getting a little stir crazy.  Especially since we didn't leave the house yesterday either due to the snow.  So, once I got the boys down for naps I thought I'd take a crack at an entry for the Face Paint Forum's latest monthly challenge: "Luck of the Irish!"

I didn't want to just go with the usual four leaf clovers, rainbows, and pot-o-gold.  So, I came up with this little scene that I like to call "Luck o' the Eighties!"  I brought back some characters from my eighties childhood.  My Little Pony, the lucky Care Bear, and the Lucky Charms guy have banded together to track down the gold at the end of the rainbow once and for all!

Here are some progress photos!  I'm not quite sure how I feel about plastering so many photos of my thigh on the internet.  But hey, sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the good of creativity.  I apologize to your eyeballs.

My pencil sketch on the back of some of the boys' scrap drawing paper...(hence the sideways parachutes in the background!)

First I drew out the design using a white Mehron pro pencil ($5).

Next I started filling in the various greens using Kryolan paints and some cosmetic glitter.

Adding a little dimension with lighter and darker shades of the same greens.

Finally something other than GREEN! I did all of this with my two Wolfe brushes, #1 and #4 round.

Well now, it sure does POP when you outline with the Wolfe black, doesn't it?! I used some Amerikan Body Art Liquid Bling to add the sparkly purple horseshoe on the pony and the gold buckles on "Lucky's" shoe and hat.

I was gonna stop there but then decided to add a rainbow with a pile of gold.

Filled in the inside of the rainbow with a sky blue, added a little base shadows, and done!

A close-up of the gold.  Oooh, shiny!

Love how that Liquid Bling makes the buckle and horseshoe pop!!

I have another design I'd like to try next but we'll see if it happens.  I'm trying to convince my wonderfully supportive husband to let me paint on his beautifully hairless and never-been-painted back, although I may have finally found a limit to his support of my business.  I didn't even want to try suggesting ponies and Care Bears for him though so I started with my own leg! Ha! Stay tuned and see if I can convince him to let me paint a more manly St. Patrick's Day design on him...