How To Apply Camo Face Paint For Hunting

Regardless of what you’re hunting, the right face paint can mean the difference between a successful hunt and a failed hunt.

Make the most of your next hunt by learning hunting face paint ideas to camouflage your skin properly makes sense. While hunting face paint designs are simple, there are lots of techniques involved depending on your other camo gear and surroundings.

Another advantage of applying deer hunting face paint effectively is that you don’t have to add extra clothing. You’ll breathe easier and won’t get too hot from having something covering your face.

In our brief face paint tutorial, you can learn the most effective hunting face paint patterns and the right way to apply your oil-based paints.

By the end, you’ll see how easily you can blend into your surroundings when turkey hunting or using a tree stand wearing your deer hunting face paint. (Read Best Hunting Shows On TV)

Getting the Right Face Paints for Hunting

Hunting gear makes you sweat, so you’ve been outside, and you’ve got dirty. The shine on your skin is so intense that your prey can see it from miles away. It doesn’t matter if you’re cool or not. Even if your skin is dark, it still shines and glistens to most animals, even in low light.

The first tangible benefit of face paint is that it doesn’t make your face look shiny at all.

Pick matte paints with no sheen, which is easier if you buy decent hunter’s face paints. They’ll always be matte.

But if you want to save money and use cheaper options, test them on your hand in good lighting to make sure there is no sheen to the colors.

Use them only if there is no sheen. It doesn’t matter what you can find that’s cheap and matte, and you can find suitable products in Halloween face paints to the make-up aisle in the store.

Once you know the suitable paints to use, it’s best to have the following colors of oil-based paints ready:

Black and Brown.
Dark Green and Light Green.
Light Tan (keep away from light colors that look like bone.
A medium gray can be helpful for winter and forest hunting sessions.

Applying Paints to Exposed Skin

Many hunters are unsure of the best way to apply camouflage face paint because camouflage face paint isn’t at the top of most hunters’ list of things to do, but hunting face paint is as important as the best hunting gear.

It’s time to get skilled at the craft once you’ve got your bunch of camo paints ready. There is more to it than just using the right colors as you need the technique.

Applying a primary color of choice in an asymmetrical method is best to start your hunting face paint technique. The goal is to blend in, so don’t make your make-up look like an Indian war chief. (Read Best Survival TV Shows To Watch)

To start, think of an uneven, full-coverage look that can cover the entire face if you can stand oil-based paints covering this much.

Use dark hues like black, dark brown/ dark green, which can darken the most prominent facial features such as the nose, forehead, chin, cheeks, and ears.
When you use lighter colors like light green, tan, gray, you need to apply these to the most recessed features of the face—eye sockets, under the nose, and circling the lips.
While it may appear strange, the object is using camouflage to break up any facial definition, such as ears sticking out.
When mixing these techniques, the aim is to hide prominent features like the forehead, which are darker and recessed features like the neck are lighter.
Just remember, it isn’t a matter of applying paints all over, as your face isn’t symmetrical, so one side may appear different.
Extend this base coat to your neck, the tops of your hands, and other exposed areas.
After covering, it’s time to blend the edges of your face and body parts to remain undetectable during deer or turkey hunting. Smear colors together in small circular motions to blend the colors.

To custom fit your hunting environment, apply your colors again, using lines or patterns that camouflage best with the surroundings.
You can find this next layer will be in unique patterns, which do any of the following:

Match a camo pattern on your hunting gear.
Resemble or match your environment.
A mix of the above two.

The patterns and shapes here work best for most common hunting environments:

Vertical stripes for woods, prairies, or any savanna regions.
Rough blotches of camo face paint are best on undergrowth or bush outs.
Lighter vertical stripes and smaller areas of darker shades of your hunting face paint are best in deep forests.
Blocky and asymmetrical greens and brown camo paint suit heavy foliage in nature.
Use more gray on winter hunts or tans for dry hunting regions.

The technique to camouflage effectively is to get creative and take a mirror on your hunting trip to help your camouflage face paint blend as far as possible.

Camouflage and camo face paint works best on deer when you use other methods such as scent-free sprays and wearing clothing that blends into the environment.

Decide on loose face paint or stick make-up. Using a loose face mask dries better than stick make-up and has more color options. (Read What Is The Most Effective Shot For Deer Size Animals)

Although loose paints are messy to remove, you need remover wipes before you start painting your face.

Stick and cake camo face paint can easily be removed with soaps or wet wipes, yet they are harder to blend into your skin tone if the product contains too much talc.

How To Mix Camo Face Paints

You can mix camo face paints with any two primary colors from the same color family. All colors from the same color family have some harmony or likeness of their own. For example, blue has blues and greens while greens have earthy yellowish tones.

Hot Weather Hunting Face Paint

Use camo colors with yellow, such as hunter orange, or even bright greens like coyote and tiger stripe, if your face paint will be applied in hot and sunny conditions.

Sunlight, according to experts, is a mixture of all colors. The color we see while gazing at an object is merely a part of this white light reflected.

Based on this idea, if you apply camo face paint that does not reflect white light, the only yellow and other colors visible will be yellow and other colors.

Winter Or Cold Weather Camo Face Painting

Use camo colors with bluish colors, such as neon yellow and vivid blue, if you’re going to hunt in the winter in chilly weather.

Spring Hunting Season

Choose colors like neon orange, which resembles safety vest colors, and greens like wood, dark
green, or olive drab for spring hunting seasons where temps are moderate and sunny but unexpectedly turn rainy throughout the afternoon hours.

How much camo face paint to apply when hunting?

Depending on your unique demands, you can choose how thick or thin your color layers should be. Your goal will be to create designs, allowing you to blend in with your settings.

If you’re planning to hunt at night, avoid bright colors and instead use palette knives. You can use clear waterproof gels to keep the color on your face and even offer protection against rain. Even with this, start your painting with a water-soluble face mask, so removing your base coat camo face paint will be easy.

Tips On How To Apply Camo Face Paint for Hunting?

The following is a basic guide for applying camo face paint for hunting. It gets you started on your designs and shows you the essentials of camouflage.

These are tips from years of practice and seeing how others do their camouflage. Everyone uses unfamiliar patterns, so don’t worry about experimentation.

Make your design simple to apply and unnoticeable. If a huge piece of a reflective area
stands out, use a darker paint for the camo pattern instead of trying to hide shiny portions with camo.
If you want more coverage and finish, use stick or cake make-up first, then top it with loose camo face paint. Instead of patting the loose face paints onto your skin, softly touch them in layers until the required coverage is reached.
Start applying face paint with larger areas to be merged into the more refined elements afterward. This lets you blend naturally into nature rather than wiping at minor details before moving to the larger regions.
Use natural colors like greens and browns from flora, rich blacks and blues from shadows, and even gray from concrete structures to mask yourself from animals in nature.
Consider the background you’ll most likely be in. If your intended scene is all green plants or bushes, you don’t want too much contrast, so it merges organically. Consider a more intricate paint pattern with fewer open spaces if you’re hunting dense woodland, as this reduces your stealthiness when moving around freely.
Make a paper sketch of the shapes you want to use before putting them on your face. This helps you to get a sense of what works and what doesn’t without risking permanent damage or skin injury by using the wrong color or drawing lines where they shouldn’t be.
Keep it simple, with paint patterns that are wide and open enough to blend in with your surroundings. The less contrast your paint pattern, the more likely it is to blend seamlessly.
Don’t forget to experiment with darkening the flesh around your eyes. When compared to only using face paint without darkening the skin beneath the eyes, it makes them stand out significantly less.
Remember that camouflage isn’t about moving from one pattern to another: it’s about varying the same color scheme depending on the light.
When outfitting for winter hunts, consider that some camo patterns function better in the snow than others. Light colors, unlike dark colors, are also better for warmer weather because the sun reflects less off of them.
The best camouflage face paint can come in handy when applying a pattern that functions as an outline. Look for patterns with this type of break in the design so you may transition from one color to the next without having a distinct line where one color ends and the next begins.
You need to be sure that other members of your hunting group know how you look after applying your camo paint.

No one wants to be accidentally shot if they are mistaken for an animal in the undergrowth. Besides this, you need to use your face paint, that contains nothing harmful and only contains non-toxic materials. (Read Shortbow Vs Longbow)

Remember to imagine yourself as your prey; what color would you be in your hunting environment? When hunting things such as rabbits, stick to paint browns and greens as an example. When hunting deer, you’ll have more options for painting because of the varied regions you will find them.

Can Deer Smell Face Paint?

When deer hunting, the scent of the face paints will be crucial. It will be tough to explain why scenting is helpful to deer hunters, but it is simple sense to deer hunters.

Hunters should, however, avoid smelling face paint while hunting. You can find many think that the paint smells of crayons, yet deer do not know what crayons smell like, thus your paint may not be offensive.

Using a spray to mask this can help, yet deer are not any more offended by this kind of smell than if they could smell or see you waiting to ambush them.