Tuesday, June 15, 2010

First face paint!



Gabrielle and I went to the Ottawa International Children's Festival this year. We got there a bit late on its last day, so the only thing left to do was watch buskers and get her face painted. This was unlike any face painting I had ever seen or heard of before. It's a group of women from Quebec City called Kromatik who do face painting as performance. A group of around 20 kids stand in a big circle and then the women walk around and paint the children's faces, seemingly at random, and as inspiration hits. Each child looks radically different from one another at the end. One will do the hair, another sponge on the colour, another will walk around with sparkles, etc. And they don't take requests. The little girl next to Gabrielle asked to be a fairy. The woman told her, point blank, that they do what *they* like, not what *you* like. Poor kid was choking back tears after that. Anyways, luckily G had no real expectations of the experience and even though she was a bit nervous each time one of the artistes came around, she stuck in there.

Above, the first woman sprayed her hair into 3 sharp spikes. It was later sprayed orange and red with black polka-dots.





The finished look. Tres cirque du soleil, n'est-ce pas?

1 comment:

Katharine said...

Well, the hair is a little odd, but the face paint is stunning!