Whether you're trying to dress up in a hurry, or are doing costumes for fidgety little kids, you can do some fun face painting effects with just a few colors and in only a few minutes. All of the styles discussed here would be easily done with a 3-5 color face painting kit, or even using some regular everyday makeup eye pencils and shadows.

Clown Faces
Clown faces are such a serious part of the clown business that professionals register their face paint designs as part of their trademark. However, clowning around for Halloween is a lot easier. First, decide how much face paint you feel comfortable wearing. Some people don’t mind all-over paint and some prefer something more minimalist. Traditionally, the face is entirely painted white, and then the eyes and mouth are outlined or accented. You can paint the end of your nose, leave it plain or find a stick-on nose to wear.

Cat Faces
Painting a cat face can be super-simple and is good for little kids (and adults) who don’t like the feel of too much makeup on their faces. The simplest cat face can be done by coloring a tiny bit of the end of the nose dark, and adding a few thin whisker lines, radiating away from the nose along the cheeks. This can be done in five minutes using an eyeliner pencil. To get fancier, you can line your eyes (swoop the ends out a bit for the "cat eye" effect and add lipstick if you wish. Don't forget the headband cat ears!

Butterfly Faces
Doing a butterfly face you get to choose how light or heavy the makeup is. To start, draw a wing shape that starts over your eyebrow, comes down the temple, along the cheek and ends near the a jaw. Then draw a mirror version of that same shape on the other side of the face. These are the wing outlines. Then you can add squiggles, dots or larger filled-in areas, just make sure that whatever you do one side of the face, you do on the other. Dress all in one color that compliments your makeup, add some quick store bought antenna and wings and you're ready to fly!

To learn more about face painting, you might like Face Painting by Klutz Inc (comes with face paints)
or The Face Painting Book of Butterflies by Marcela Murad and Friends