Diversionary Tactics: Freaky Venom Face Paint

If you guys are keeping track of the days you know that this should technically be a post about my lack of progress on the stairs, but instead I’m going tell you a story about how I– a grown-ass adult– dressed up in full-body spandex and went out in public with my face painted like this…

You just forgot all about the stairs, didn’t you?

That, my friends, is what I like to call a DIY diversionary tactic. But I actually am going to talk about the stairs for just a second because it is a relevant lead-in to the whole face paint thing. So, this weekend I had grand plans to finally paint the walls in the stairwell, which I thought would make for some nice before-and after pictures today. I got all the rest of the wallpaper off, patched and sanded down the walls, got a fresh roller and brush out, got all ready to put the first coat on, and when I picked up the paint can to pour it into the pan? Dead empty. This is something that is normally solved by a quick trip to Lowe’s, but, ha, uh, funny story: outfitting the property for donkeys + putting in a new well tank + donkey adoption fees + empty fuel-oil tank in a two week span of time = not just out of paint, but also out of money.

I’m not complaining, I just need to be ultra conservative with my cash for the next couple of weeks… but dammed if I wasn’t all set to paint something, and since I couldn’t paint the hallway walls, I painted my face.

True story.

And I also happened to need a costume because some of my friends were hosting a Heroes vs. Villains party over the weekend, and the forces of good and evil needed to face off to see who would win the epic battle of laser tag. And glow bowling.

Since I needed a costume on a budget, and I already had face paint from my Halloween costume last year, I looked to the internet for some awesome villain-esq facepaint.

Venom (from Spiderman, for those of you not in the super-villain know) seemed like a fun choice.

That was a little intense– seeing as how I’m not a muscly bald dude– but I found a talented girl who did this version, which I thought I could handle…

So, this is how my supervillain costume– that cost exactly $0– went down.

I put on my black spandex workout clothes, slicked my hair back into a ponytail, and started with this.

Scary… but not scary enough. (The pictures are kind of shit, but listen, I was working with a time limit and bad lighting.)

I started with the outline in black, using a small brush…

Then– all those undergrad painting classes finally get put to use– I started filling in the white spaces. Namely the eye and teeth…

God, I didn’t realize how blurry that was until I just posted it, but squint your eyes a little… you get the picture.

Then… the big black spaces using my fingers, leaving the detail work for the brush.

I went back in with a brush to do the detail work and add a little shading to the teeth where possible…

And the last step was using a black liquid liner to finish it off…

See… this is how you go from human…

To villain…

In three easy steps.

We ran into some high school kids at the laser tag place who were absolutely flabbergasted when twenty five “old” people walked into the room dressed in tights and capes. So I looked right at them and said, “Kids, when you grow up you have two choices: you can spend your whole life worrying about what other people will think of you, or you can be the kind of adults who go out in public dressed like comic book heroes on a Saturday night just because. Pick your path.”

I could be living a much more normal life right now, but every crazy, wonderful day, I’m glad that the path I picked led me here.