Infinity War is out, and I won't give you any spoilers. Let's just say that even getting there 30 minutes ahead of the showing we were able to get tickets for, we barely managed to get three seats together. This epic superhero movie is popular, and since it contains many favorite superheroes, it's likely you'll be painting a whole lot of superhero-inspired designs in the months to come. 

We all have some fun superhero-y designs in our repertoire, but in case you get a request for Nebula (played by Karen Gillan), this tutorial will help you navigate the basics. You can simplify it quite a bit by using one strokes to make it a potential design for your events. 

Materials

• White face paint (Wolfe) Alternates
• Black face paint for line work (Diamond FX)
• Black face paint for shadows (Mehron Paradise)
• Black face paint for center forehead piece (TAG pearl black)
• Metallic bright blue face paint (Silly Farm Ziva Shimmer)
• Metallic royal blue face paint (Silly Varm Sapphire Shimmer)
• Silver face paint (Mehron Paradise)
• Sponge
• 1/4 inch flat brush
• #3 round brush (Loew Cornell) 
• Blending brush or small filbert
• Dot stencil (BAM 2031)

Instructions

Begin by outlining your design with a small round brush and white. I found this particularly helpful in keeping me on track with the pieces of the Nebula design.

Load your sponge with Ziva blue shimmer and Sapphire blue shimmer or your favorite medium and royal blue metallic colors. Sponge in the areas as shown. 

Load your small flat brush with silver to paint in the area around the eye and also the central forehead piece. For the center section of the forehead, mix some metallic black with the silver to make it darker than the rest. The reason I chose a small flat brush for this is that I could keep flat edges while filling in the area more quickly than a round brush would have been able to do. 

Using a small round brush, like a #2 or #3, outline the sections of Nebula's face, staying up on the point of the brush. Use a blending brush or small filbert to create shadowed edges to sections of the face. 

Here's a close-up of the eye piece to help you. Load your sponge with a little black and fill in the inner-eye area with this, blending into the blue. 

Using the dot stencil and a sponge or dauber, add a little texture around the hairline of the design with black.  

Finally, use a small round brush to add some white highlights throughout the design. 

Enjoy!

Beth MacKinney is the owner of and primary face painter for Face Paint Pizzazz in Elgin, Illinois, and her artwork has appeared in The Colored Palette and SkinMarkz magazines. She services the western and northwestern Chicago suburbs, Chicago’s north side, and the eastern and southeastern suburbs of Rockford. Stop by Clownantics.com to enjoy more of Beth’s face painting tutorials.