Catriona Finlayson talks about Superstar

Hi I'm Cat Finlayson; I started face painting in 2006 & was lucky enough to win UK Face Painter of the Year & 5^th in the World Face Awards in 2007. That year I painted my 1^st body too, and got hooked. I quit science and since then face & body art has become my sole income as well as hobby. The last few years I started placing in/ winning body competitions too (e.g. the Welsh Festival, Phizzog, Body Factory, Paintopia), and I love it.

                                  

I tend to keep a body-paint kit as well as a face paint kit as I prefer slightly different brands/effect for each side of the art. I have tested/ tried most products in the years. I now mostly stick to Grimas, Paradise and Kryolan for my face kit, with some DFX/ TAG split-cakes (mainly DIY'd as I use them up so fast – my almost-full-time summer booking is 70 faces daily). My body kit is mostly DFX and Grimas as I find they seem to 'stay' slightly better on bodies where they get rubbed more etc.

I recently had a last minute booking to paint 200+ dancers faces for the launch of a Norwich Dance School, Dynamic Dance, which also doubled as a fund-raiser for Meningitis. There were 2 performances, matinee & evening, with several different 'acts' in each, repeated,and a whole-cast stage call at the end.

About 100 of the dancers had to be simple ½ -face robots in silver with black & white line-work, with several needing to wipe it off between dances and then get it re-applied for the final performances. The rest needed simple spiderwebs in black, or silver & black gothic swirly eyes.

I haven't liked most brands of silver I have tried, the only truly metallic look being when I mix Graftobian or Mehron metallic powders with their matching liquids for the 'living statue' look we often get asked for. But both brand's mixers were not great on faces near eyes etc- I usually use their powders dry instead which is a bit messy. Kryolan's metallics are good, but not so much their silver, and the last Wolfe silver I had didn't work at all (not sure if it was a bad batch though).

So, I thought I'd give Superstar a try and ordered the silver & the silver glitter. At the event I had a sort of production-line going, as its faster when doing lots of identical faces. I'd sponge 3 at a time silver, then do all the black (paradise) line-work, then the white highlights – as you can see very basic as I only had a couple of hours before the matinee to do the 200 dancers in! It was a nice easy booking to carry kit in for though – Superstar silvers, Paradise black, Grimas & DFX white being my only paints!

I found the Superstar quite soft compared to some brands, but it gives a beautifully shiny silver coat when applied with enough water – thicker when damper. The more sheer drier application was also quite effective although its slightly more difficult to get a smooth pale base than it is when using Kryolan or Snazaroo sparkle white, for example.

Superstar seemed to last quite well, even on active sweaty faces, as I only had a couple of the 100 robots come back to get 'fixed' between dances. The finale shots from the 2^nd performance show it had blurred a bit but the silver was still shiny, and the kids all said it felt fine on too. It washed off easily just with soap & paper towels in the changing room loos, as no trace was left on the dancers who I had to decorate in other styles for their other acts.The only drawback I can see is the smell – I really do not like the 'perfume' added to the paint. Its quite sweet, sickly and very noticeable. Superstar have removed it from the new batches I hear (indeed my original Ziva Blue had no smell but my new bigger blue still has it).

Superstar Ziva blue has now replaced my fave sparkly blues in my face kit, and added a beautiful sheen (darkened with DFX blue) I used on “Queen' Laurence at Painswick Art Couture. I use it as a base where I sued to use DFX metallic baby blue, a Kryolan Interferenz or Snaz Sparkle Turquoise. It can be a little patchier when dry but then it is a stronger/ darker shade so thin areas let more skin show through.

I made some split cakes with shades of brown and those are looking good so far; I'll see if they last as long as DFX etc splits do over the next few weeks.  It is definitely 1 of the 'softer' brands – if you transfer paints between pots of make split cakes you will know what I mean. Kryolan (& Paradise metallics) tend to crumble, most UVs are crumbs, some matt colours in most brands can be extra-hard & very very difficult to cut up. Superstar has a 'chewy' texture like a stiff DFX metallic/ Grimas white or a softer DFX non-metallic, if that makes sense. Which means its perfect for cutting up!

I tried the Superstar Line white to replace my beloved DFX white. I work with it 'wet' – at the start of the day I plop a chunk of DFX white into an empty pot in my palette, squirt on some water, and without mixing, usually end up with a lovely creamy liquid DFX white ready to use when needed. I tried this with the Superstar line white and it did that sort of slightly 'curdled' clumpy liquid thing that's more like the texture Grimas white/ paradise goes if you try to make them liquid. It also seems to clog up and plump up my brush, which I didn't like – the DFX keeps the brush slim and ready to do fine lines with (sorry hard to describe this). However, the liquid Superstar line white DID seem to be nearly as strong as DFX over other colours (shown here on my arm over Superstar Ziva blue – DFX to the right,Superstar to the left). Not quite as opaque, but better than Grimas/ Paradise white.

So overall – naff smell, (glad that is going), gorgeous metallics,  a close 2^nd to non-bleeding-through-colours line-work favourites...... a good addition to your kit!

How Brierley Thorpe Created Her Wining Design

Here is how the winner of our Superstar Pure Silver competition Brierley Thorpe created her winning design:

SuperstarSilver Competition for the Face painting shop & Illusion Magazine : 

I only had a rough idea for this robot (who we decided, afterwards, was in fact a robot- pharaoh), and didn’t sketch out any ideas beforehand, as I was so up against it, time-wise. I was aiming for a sleek, smooth, sci-fi look, which would follow the facial contours, using the Superstar Silver and other complimentary shimmers from the range (I have a few, now!).

I started with the eye areas then drew the main sections in black straight on, without blocking. Next, I painted a wider line of Silver Shimmer inside my black lines with a wide flat ‘Tag’ brush, then dragged this line of colour into the blank spaces, before sponging, to fill. I then darkened certain areas with Ziva (my favourite Superstar, and currently my most frequently used face paint) a dark cherry from Grimas, plus Paradise black, to intensify the colour and ‘sink’ the low areas.

All detailing on the design was painted in Diamond FX black, using a Grimas No.2 brush. The forehead was painted last,with the aim of creating a slightly raised convex disc made up of control panels.

I lightly sponged another layer of silver over some of the areas painted with Ziva, painted the hair, ears and neck, and finished with white highlights and glitter.

Products used:

Superstar Silver Shimmer

Superstar Ziva Shimmer

Grimas 507

Diamond FX Black

Diamond FX White

Paradise Black

Grimas Silver glitter

Brierley x

www.furfangfairy.com

 Well done to Brierley on her winning design

Roxanne Horn talks about Superstar paint

Superstarpaint

Every time I open a container of Superstar paint it brings me back to when I was a child.

My mother, who painted me and my sister two times a year, always used Superstar paint.

Today I still hear the mothers of the children I paint say that the smell brings back memories.

Superstar nowadays is a global brand and is still made in the same factory by the same people. Sometimes it’s just better not to change a successful formula.

It makes you greedy. Just try and decide for yourself, when you want to buy paint, to only buy max. six colors. You can’t. I bet you decided to buy black, white, red, blue, green, yellow..and okay..pink for the girls. So with a color list in hand you go to the store, but when you arrive you are overwhelmed by more than sixty colors! Not only standard colors, but also metallic’s and what?! metallic with glitter! :O

They have every color you can think of and also colors you didn’t even know existed.. They didn’t, your right.. But Superstar invents their own colors! Ziva for example. And because it’s a color you’ve never seen before, you just have to have it so you can show everyone that you are such a pro face painter, you have an unique-never-seen-before color. ;) 

 

So everybody knows that black is black and white is white, right? But of course Superstar has to break that rule.. They have two blacks and two whites. :/

A normal white for skulls and vampires and a deep white for pretty crisp lines and teardrops.

And of course a normal black for shades and a deep black for tiger stripes and batman.

You might think you don’t need all four..you don’t..but when you do, you don’t want to go back to two. ;)

What’s good to know about Superstar paint is that you don’t need much water to activate the paint and when you apply it it takes only seconds to dry. Because of the deep pigments some colors leave a trace on the skin, but I’ll bet girls don’t mind when you put that pretty raspberry pink on their lips. ;)

Also every color is different, some have a soft substance and others are quit hard. Last but not least, the good thing about Superstar paint is that you can leave the containers open for days and they will not dry out!

Roxanne x

You can keep up to date with Roxanne at :  http://roxarosa.com/ 

or her Facebook page :  

http://www.facebook.com/RoxSH.creative

 The whole range of Superstar paints can be found at www.thefacepaintingshop.com