Beginner’s Guide to Snowman Face Painting

Snowman face paint tutorial
Kristin Olsson — 13 December 2018 —

Cheek art is perfect for kids with bangs or who don’t want their whole face painted! As you may have noticed already, I am a great fan of designs that can be scaled up or down in details depending on how much time you have.

A key to painting fast designs that look impressive and striking is to make sure you don’t paint it too small.

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Materials used:

Step 1: The One Stroke

For the first step one use one stroke and paint a curved line that comes to a point near the center focal point between the eyes. I use this style of one stroke base for a lot of my cheek art designs.

This line will be a good base in order to achieve balance for the rest of the design and help to pull it all together.

a boy with blue lines painted around his left eye
Tip: Check out Your Favorite Christmas Ideas with Easy Tutorials for more holiday inspiration!

Step 2: Snowman Face Paint Main Shape

Next, I move on to painting the main shape of the snowman. I use a ½ angled brush for this — I load it in white and then dip the tip of it in a light blue color in order to give the snowman a bit more dimension.

As you can see, I don’t paint the whole snowman — only about half of it. The reason why I do this is so that when I move on to paint the details on the snowman they will be a lot easier to paint as they won´t be so tiny.

The fact that the snowman is bigger will make it the main focal point of the design and the design will have more of a “wow”-factor than if you painted it very small.

a boy with blue lines painted around his left eye and a base of the snowman

Step 3: The Snowman Outfit

For the hat and the scarf, I load my angled ½ brush with a light and a dark blue color.

As you can see, I keep the darkest blue color facing towards the head of the snowman — this mimics the direction of the light as it would be in real life, and voila — you have created a design that already has a 3-dimensional feel!

a boy with blue lines painted around his left eye and a base of the snowman with a scarf and a hat
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Step 4: The Decorations

For the next step, I added some stenciled details. In this case, I use stars and snowflakes, and I have also used a cloud stencil to create the illusion that the snowman is buried in snow.

If you have a long line, you can paint some white dots in different sizes with your round brush to create the illusion that it is snowing, which will also give a great effect!

a boy with an undetailed snowman with a scarf and a hat with added stars to the design

Step 5: Snowman Makeup Final Touches

I then move on to paint an orange carrot nose and the black details on the snowman. You can leave the snowman makeup like this and you have a super cool wintery design!

a boy with a completed snowman face paint design
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Step 6: The Funky Addition

…but this snowman face paint here was a bit cheeky and wanted to have a snowball fight! 😜

I also added some white highlights/details and some shading around the stars for this snowman makeup optional step.

If you only want to add a few snowballs that will look great even without the rest of the details. Happy painting!

a smiling boy with a completed snowman face paint design

Want more Christmas tutorials? Check out our other tutorials:
Arctic Ice Princess by Kristin Olsson
Christmas Reindeer by Kristin Olsson
Three Magical Christmas Butterflies by Annabel Hoogeveen

Did you enjoy this snowman face paint tutorial? Hit “SHARE” and let your fellow face painters know about it!

Let’s spread more smiles this Christmas season and make as many children happy as we can! 😍

 — Kristin Olsson

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