One of a clown's roles is to paint cheek art on kids.
Clowns at kids' parties often put on a circus-like show, juggle, make balloon animals and paint cheek art on kids' faces. Cheek art, in contrast to full face painting, is when the clown uses the child's cheek as the canvas and paints a small stand-alone design or image on the child's cheek.
Clowns
A child at a party with a clown might just want to have a picture of a clown painted on her cheek. Make a clown face by painting a white circle, adding an exaggerated mouth, nose and eyes in bright colors and painting a big, colorful wig on top. To make a whole clown on a child's cheek, use a bold color for the clown suit, add a white head on top, big shoes on the feet and a colorful wig. For details, paint stripes on the clown suit and a face on the clown face.
Animals
Images of animals are simple and easy to recognize when painted on a child's cheek. Make a ladybug by painting a red circle and adding black details, such as a head, antennae, spots and legs. Girls appreciate a simple butterfly image with wings of a solid color and black detail work to make a body. Just outline the wings and add a few dots or stripes on the wings. Boys might like to have a snake with a red forked tongue. Other simple animals for cheek art include fish, frogs and birds.
Simple Shapes
Clowns can use a basic repertoire of shapes to create very simple cheek art. For example, a yellow circle with short lines extending radially becomes a sun and a series of horseshoe shapes in different colors makes a rainbow. Put together a trapezoid and a semicircle of different colors to make a cupcake. A cone and a circle make an ice cream cone. When painting a star or heart, add a few detail lines outside it, such as curly lines outside a heart or arched lines next to the star to make it look like a shooting star.
Characters
Any popular character from movies or television is a good candidate for a cheek art image. Young children might enjoy characters from Sesame Street, such as Elmo, Cookie Monster or Oscar. Each of these just need a fuzzy-textured face, big round eyes, a black mouth and, if applicable, a nose. Comic book superheroes, such as Spiderman and Batman, are also popular images, especially for boys. Young girls might enjoy a Hello Kitty face, which is just a simple white cat face with a pink bow across the bottom of one ear and black eyes, whiskers and an oval nose.
