Hoppers Crossing resident Dianne Koennecke is an award-winning face painter. 84585 Picture: DAMJAN JANEVSKI
BY ALESHA CAPONE
FACE painter Dianne Koennecke likes seeing children smile when she makes them up to be a beautiful butterfly or cartoon character.
The mother-of-two recently moved to Hoppers Crossing and runs a business called Bunyip Brushstrokes.
She paints faces at children’s parties, corporate events and community functions and enjoys doing ‘pregnant body art’ too.
Ms Koennecke is also studying a Bachelor in social sciences and counselling.
“When you’re studying full-time it’s hard to go out and get any normal work but face painting fits in perfectly,” she said.
“You can’t beat work where you have children smiling at you all day.
“People ask if I do other kinds of art and I say, ‘I like my canvas because it smiles back at me’.”
As a qualified childcare worker of 20 years, Ms Koennecke started face painting as a fundraising method for a playgroup she was running.
Ms Koennecke said since moving from South Australia to Victoria she has been surprised to discover the amount of talented face and body painters in Wyndham who are keen to share their knowledge.
“Just doing a butterfly on a child’s face, there can be 50 ways to do it,” she said.
“It’s pretty wide and varied, I got asked to do a lawn-mower the other day.”
Ms Koennecke has won two prizes for her face painting, a monthly online award from The Australian Body Art Awards and another from Facepaintshop.com.
Artistic talent seems to run in the family as her 11-year-old daughter Matilda is also developing her own skills in the area.
“She is a really talented balloonist and I’m encouraging her to do that so hopefully we can have a family business,” Ms Koennecke joked.
See www.facebook.com/pages/Bunyip-Brushstrokes for more information.
