Painting licensed characters and/or emblems is often something we, as face and body painters, get asked for – from Spider-Man to the Hulk to Sponge Bob to Winnie the Pooh to NHL logos.
Spider-Man has long been a staple of EVERY face painters repertoire. Can anyone, who has been painting professionally for any length of time, claim to have NEVER painted a Spider-something?? It is sort of a right of passage to being able to call yourself a “professional”!!
I try not to use licensed characters in my promotional material, but I will paint them if asked AND I know how or the customer can produce an image for me to copy from. Face paint washes off and I don’t do pay-per-face so I’m not too concerned about the Disney police – although, I don’t paint many Disney characters! But now that Disney own the Marvel stable of characters, INCLUDING Spider-Man, things may change.
I have painted cartoon characters for contest purposes…. including [whispers] Disney…
This is my Lady and the Tramp (Disney) design that won the 2006 Fantasy Worldwide Face Painting Contest in Belgium, the theme was Movies:
Here are a few I did for the 2006 UK Face Painting Convention photo competition – the theme was Cartoons:
Pinky and The Brain (Warner Bros.):
Batman (DC Comics): 
Road Runner & Wiley Coyote (Looney Tunes):
Those were all done for competition (and some also subsequently published in various magazines). I don’t show these on my display boards when working… as replicating designs in detail is way too time consuming.
When asked for, I paint Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… I find them not too hard to do quickly. I stick to G1 Optimus Prime though, other versions get too detailed!
On kids I skip the mouth opening and make it a solid white mask as shown in this clipping:
Have to keep the line moving, you know!
I also have to admit to basing some designs for theatre on Disney’s versions… [sigh] What else could I do when the costume designer made Baloo a BLUE bear????
I avoid doing sport logos… they are too fiddly and time-consuming. Have you SEEN the Edmonton Oilers logo???
