The Native American tribes had many different designs for face painting. Every tribe had it's own particular design, but each person would also paint their face reflecting a personal message or a design having personal spiritual significance. Colors normally used in painting their faces were red, black, green, white and yellow. Each of these colors had a certain meaning, red was the color of war, black the color of the living, green was meant to increase the wearer's night vision, white meant peace - i.e. flying a white flag, and yellow signified death or an encounter with death. A few tribes would associate different meanings to each color, but most of them had the same meaning for each color.
Men would often paint lines on their cheeks, foreheads, and chin. And the women used mainly dots on their faces. Often the males would separate their into two parts and paint each section differently. Most of their paintings were not very elaborate, and because the colors had signified a happening or feeling they used the color to illustrate meanings.
To create your own little Indian use some of the ideas below
Half Face Design.
1st Face.
Take your sponge and red paint and paint the top half of the face ending in a straight line across the nose to the middle part of each ear. Take a medium brush and paint a blue line across the face from ear to ear. Paint another line in white below the blue line. The red paint needs to come down to these two lines. For added flare paint vertical stripes on the cheek and chin in red or black.
2nd Face.
With white paint and a sponge paint the lower half of the face. The white paint should end just below the eyes. Next take black paint and a large flat brush and paint a black stripe from ear to ear across the eyes. The top of the strip should cover the eyebrows ending in line with the tip of the ears. The bottom should be straight below the eyes and then slant down and end three fourths of the way down the ear. Black paint can also be applied to the lips. With a large round brush paint two vertical red lines on each cheek. Then take a small brush and paint a small white line across the forehead, above the black paint and you're done!
For girls a small feather or two on the cheek bone looks very pretty. Start with white paint and paint the white of the feathers. The edges should be a bit rough or jagged and the end should come down to a point. The shape of the feather can also be slightly curved. Draw a thin black line in the middle of each feather and then paint the lower half of the feather black. For a more natural effect let some of the white paint show through the black. Take the white paint again and paint two short lines or ribbons attached to the end of each feather. Edge the ribbons with black paint.