Star Shields and Son Look on Every Face as a Canvas

There’s this 82-year-old woman in Laguna Beach who wanted her face painted for a fantasy party she was throwing, so she told face painter Star Shields, “And look, I don’t want a namby-pamby job.”

Shields is getting used to those demands to paint dragons, dolphins, clouds, moons, stars and dream sequences on people’s faces, heads, arms, backs and stomachs in what he calls the makeup of the ‘90s.

“It’s really for everyone,” he said while posing so his 11-year-old son, and assistant, Sai Shields, could paint a galaxy on half his face. “You know, he’s getting pretty good,” said Shields, who earlier had painted half his son’s face.

Shields said the work is an art form “and every face is a new canvas.” Bald heads, too. “I did this totally bald guy with an outer-space scene, and it had an incredible effect.”

Besides the joy of creating new scenes and experimenting with new settings, “it’s better than driving in rush-hour traffic every morning,” he said.

He also makes money in graphic design, sells airbrushed T-shirts and sometimes contracts for special-effects makeup in video and motion picture productions.

Shields, who operates Fantasy Faces in Laguna Beach, said he’s available for birthdays, bar mitzvahs, special events and theme parties “and anything else, so long as it’s not pornographic.”

At Halloween, for instance, he matches costumes with a face painting.

The makeup of the ‘90s, as he puts it, doesn’t necessarily mean a full-face painting.

“It might be just a moon or a star on a woman’s cheekbone or by her eye to highlight her own makeup. It makes them feel like a movie star for a day,” he said, noting his work is not unlike that of manicurists who “put art on fingernails.”

He also takes a picture of his work to make it last longer than just a day.

His face art is applied with a sponge, miniature spray guns, stencils and nontoxic water-base makeup, removable with soap and water.

His sometimes-wild art form has provided him with jobs at face painting and fancy face parties. “I’m actually a performing artist,” said Shields, who has been packing them in at his booth at the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach. “I actually put on a show.”

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a father-and-son act.

Jennifer Waterhouse, 10, of Laguna Niguel won the Junior World Golf Championship division for girls 10 and younger last month in San Diego, but she remembers her first tournament a year ago when she shot a 15 on the first hole and an 11 on the second.

However, she has improved. She recently scored an 86 on her home course, the par-72 San Clemente Municipal.

There are drive-through banks, drive-through cleaners and drive-through restaurants, so why not a drive-through blood pressure check?

“This is so trouble free,” said Donna Wolf, spokeswoman for Santa Ana Hospital Medical Center where the quick blood pressure check is taken, “that people don’t even have to get out of their car. All they do is roll down the window, and certified nurses will take their pressure.”

She said the hospital “wanted to get creative” to urge people to establish a self-health maintenance program and added the blood pressure check to other free health services.

“People can stop by on their way to or from lunch,” said Wolf, of Garden Grove, “because it only takes about five minutes.” She said car passengers can have their pressure checked, too. The service is available from 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday at the north entrance to the medical center, 1901 N. Fairview St., Santa Ana.

Roy A. Brandt of San Clemente is an original member of the San Clemente-based Tri-Cities Water District board of directors, and he really worked for the district.

So it seems only right that the district do something for him.

The district’s 48-million-gallon water storage facility in San Clemente--called Palisades Reservoir--is now Roy A. Brandt Reservoir.

Acknowledgments--Cal State Fullerton students Rebecca Eldridge, 24, of Orange and Jeff Carr, 20, of Fullerton were named with six other California collegiate bowlers to compete in Japan during a 16-day bowling tour sponsored by the Japanese Bowling Proprietors Assn. They leave Aug. 13.