If you think you know face painting, think again. Local artist Emily Cooper’s new and growing business, Let’s Face It with Emily, is about far more than just a simple heart or a rainbow on one cheek. Cooper, with her clear talents and long-time penchant for painting, transforms face painting into a true art, creating intricate, detailed, eye-catching looks on customers of all ages.
Let’s Face It with Emily launched in 2022. As Cooper was brainstorming potential business ideas, she knew she wanted to do something that would combine her love of children, the community, and art. “We threw it out as an idea, like, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I were a face painter?’ [We] didn’t realize that’s an actual job people are paid to do,” Cooper recounts.
However, shortly thereafter, someone on Facebook was looking for a face painter and Cooper volunteered. Since then, she’s used her local connections to find her way into various venues and events. Now you can find Let’s Face It with Emily at Penn State home football games and other Penn State sporting events, private parties, weddings, and more.
While Cooper makes her intricate work look easy, she admits that face painting at a high skill level comes with a learning curve. “I was an acrylic artist my whole life,” she explains. “Just because you think you’re good at painting does not mean you’re going to jump right into face painting. You might have a leg up, but it’s still a lot of work to learn the ins and outs of how to make it go smoothly. … You go from a flat, stationary canvas to a five-year-old that wiggles. They have bumps, hair, bruises. … They’re moving and talking.”
Luckily, Cooper’s picked up a few tricks of the trade to help her along the way. She discovered an extensive online face painting community, and she’s found particular professional face painting products that help her not only achieve a stunning look, but also to work faster, painting more faces in less time than it might take a nonprofessional.
“One of the big differences between volunteers and professionals,” she says, “is professionals have done a lot of research and background work to find the right products that will help them move quicker and give better-looking results. … That’s a huge struggle at large-volume events. If [someone] wants a tiger, someone who hasn’t been [face painting] a long time will think, ‘I have to paint this kid’s whole face orange. I have to put white here and here. I have to outline everything. I have to do all the stripes.’”
In contrast, Cooper has finetuned the designs she offers so that she can paint a thirty-second, two-minute, five-minute, or ten-minute version of each design. She adapts her designs and the time required for each to event demand and offers a limited number of designs, ranging from superheroes to animals, to help indecisive children—though she’s willing to take special requests, too.
“If someone wants a unicorn, but there are twenty people in line, I’m going to do a very cute and effective unicorn in a minute or less … but if it’s a birthday party with ten kids and I’m there for a few hours, they’ll get a full-face unicorn,” she further explains.
She notes that the average professional face painter can paint around ten to twelve faces in an hour, but at large events with high demand, she can paint around twenty to thirty faces using speed painting techniques that professional artists often charge more for, but that she offers at her normal rate, creating finished, professional-looking designs in under a minute.
It’s not just speed, precision, and a professional look that set apart Cooper’s offerings, though. Hygiene and sanitation are also extremely important to her, and something she says many face painting volunteers, or other face painters who are not insured professionals, just don’t know about—which is particularly concerning considering that, most of the time, they’re working with children.
“Parents [need] to be educated about this,” she says. “They see face painting at a fair and they think everyone’s getting their face painted, so let’s do it. They’re not considering that a product might have lead in it because it came from a non-regulated country. … Hygiene and sanitation [are] required to keep kids safe.” Other risks she points to include infection, dermatitis, and chemical burns.
Since conception, Let’s Face It with Emily has expanded beyond face painting. Cooper also offers bump painting, which is painting a pregnant client’s “bump” for fun photoshoots that can include the entire family (Cooper gives an example of painting the bump as a giant flower, and painting other family members’ faces with a similar nature motif, such as a butterfly or a bumblebee). She also offers glitter bars for weddings, festivals, and similar party-style events, wherein guests can combine glitter, rhinestones, and gems to create sparkling looks in a short amount of time. Over the holidays, you may have additionally seen Cooper’s work in downtown State College, where she painted several storefronts’ window displays.
Looking to the future, Cooper hopes to appear at larger events, as well as broaden her team to include other face painters and expand the sides of her business that focus on other artforms, not just face painting.
To see more of Cooper’s work, go to LetsFaceItwithEmily on Facebook. For rates and more information, contact Cooper at [email protected] or (570) 875-8685. T&G
Holly Riddle is a freelance writer for Town&Gown.
