Arts Festival

So I’m really into volunteering lately, and honestly it has little to do with making my resume look good... and more about having me well rounded as a person. And honestly a little bit about Karma.

I saw that the SLC’s Arts Festival was coming up, and I always attend it every year. I thought it would be fun to volunteer and take advantage of the free admission for volunteers.

I checked out their website for volunteering opportunities and found that I could choose from the following options: entrance greeter, set up/take down of the booths, beer/wine booth, or the kids face painting. I didn’t really want to be a greeter or do setup/take down. And the beer booth actually sounded fun even though I don’t drink beer or wine because A: it would be easy and was less intimidating than face painting. Only dilemma… but I may or may not have a valid driver’s license at the moment. Not suspended... just expired. So although I’m over 21, without a valid license the beer booth was out. So all that left me was kids face painting.

Forever ago Laura volunteered doing face painting at an arts festival or some event and being the artist that she is, I signed her up to volunteer with me as well. That way if I got “fired” from painting I could be her assistant and clean her brushes or something. LOL.

We got to the festival earlier than our scheduled time and were able to walk around for a bit and check out some booths.

The tent/area the face painting was in had a long line of people waiting their turn. We found someone who looked in charge, and they basically told us where the supplies were and to find a seat wherever. That was all the instruction we got. We got a sign we could hold up when we were “open” and the next person in line would come take a seat. There were a lot of pictures of random designs/pictures the kids could choose from. I wish I could’ve just chosen a few simple designs the kids could pick, because my only experience in drawing is from some “Pictionary” like app on my phone.

My first client was a year and a half years old, and was super challenging to have sit still. But luckily his mom only requested a puppy face, and I think I pulled it off okay.

The majority of the kids were 4-6 year old girls. I painted a lot of butterflies, hearts, princess crowns, Hello Kitty, and puppies. I attempted to paint Gene Simmons from kiss. Which when first requested I didn’t even know who he was. Luckily they had a picture they showed me, and I of course recognized the crazy face painting of KISS. I also had a request for an “Angry Birds”. That sort of failed miserably and I thought I was going to get fired by a 10 year old. But he faked that he was pleased with it at least. A pre-teen girl asked me to draw a pink dragon, and showed me some crazy elaborate picture of what she had in mind. Laura was just finishing up painting a Bengal tiger so I asked her if she’d draw the pink dragon instead.

Five minutes before the dragon request I’d overheard a rude mom loudly complaining about her child’s face paint and demanding that it be “redone” or a refund or something. I overheard her saying her other (young) daughter could’ve done a better job painting, and went off on the volunteer. I didn’t see the paint job so I don’t know how it compared to my work, but it intimidated me to say the least. Hence the reason why I made Laura paint the dragon, and I stuck to my simple designs. Fortunately all the moms of my kids were super nice, and didn’t have crazy expectations of some van gogh face painting.

Overall it was pretty fun and I’m glad I signed us up. Afterwards we walked around the rest of the festival. And we got vouchers to come back tomorrow, and a t-shirt.

Maybe next year we’ll do the beer/wine booth instead.

impressive sand art

I got permission from all the parents to take pictures of some of the finished face painting. Here are a few that we did. I didn't take pictures of all of them, or even just the best ones actually. 

first face painting ever, he was good for about 2 min so this is what I came up with  :)

my angry birds attempt, sadly this wasn't my worst  face painting ..

laura's angry bird version. way better. 

she wanted a heart angel? 

Laura painting a dinosaur I think?

its a good thing I'm not a tattoo artist. 

woodstock

snoopy

she wanted a heart rainbow, and she  is twin with the girl below.

cute pink pony

tiger. 

princess crown

this guy asked laura for a flower and butterfly.. he should've come to me, that was my specialty, LOL

and she of course rocked this butterfly for him,