Tiger Paint

Tiger Paint

I decided to try something a little different than just the basic face paint and decided to try some hand painting, as I came a cross a couple of artists during my research which do this. I decided to try and create a tiger image. 

Painting on my right hand was easy and not much of a challenge but painting on my left hand (as I am left handed) was a struggle.

Deciding where the image should start on one hand and end on the other was also a challenging task as if any natural skin tone was showing it would ruin the effect. 

Also deciding the camera angle was difficult as I has to try and arrange the camera in a way that would make it look like the tiger print on my hands lined up with my facial features. If I was to do this again I think I would work on a model instead of trying to create the image upon myself.  
I think it would be a great effect if I used more than one pair of hands and hand painted multiple hands in order to create a bigger image.

Lion Design

Lion Design

This painted animal is my favourite. I like the detail and depth I managed to create with fine brush strokes and shading. 

To create this image I built up layers of fine brush strokes in order to create a fur like feeling, I used orange,brown a touch of black and yellow. 

I then positioned the eyes over my own eyebrows. This was more difficult then originally expected as making it look realistic was hard. On previous attempts the eyes weren't the same size or were totally uneven. I added shading and contouring with darker shades of the colours. I then added the nose with a black paint. 

If I were to recreate the image I would make the nose smaller and try and make thee eyes more realistic.

This is deffinatly my favourite out of the three and I will be using this as my final piece.

Wolf Attempt

Wolf Idea

For my second make up I decided to attempt a wolf look, I still don't particularly like this piece and I think the muzzle of the wolf stands out enough. 

From the previous idea of the zebra I decided to try and add in smaller finer strokes with a detailed artists brush in order to try and add more of a realistic fur texture.

To create this look I painted around my eyes and mouth white and the rest of my face a light grey. I then flicked on a darker grey paint to create a different texture. I then added darker grey,white and black lines flicking outwards from my face in order to create a hairy fur texture.

After this I painted my nose dark grey and sponged on black and white to create a wet look.

I then placed down the positioning of my teeth with a white and filled them in. 
I drew around my newly placed teeth with a pink eye shadow to create gums,and shaded the upper parts of the teeth to make shadows. 
After this I filled in the inner section and in between the teeth with black to add depth and to hide my lips.
I added in brown shading for the muzzle  and to add shadows and depth. Finally I added whiskers and I was done.

If I was to re create this look I would try and make the muzzle of the wolf stand out more and depthen the eyes with more shading and dark areas. I would  also add more detail and more teeth and more detail in the fur.

Zebra Attempt

Zebra attempt

I decided to try and portray a zebra through body illustration, unfortunately I don't think it turned out that good, there isn't enough detail in the make up. 

I firstly painted my face plain white and then simply added theblock stripes with a fine artists brush.

I dont think this piece was a success. This will not be my final piece.

I think in order to create a more detailed look I sould have added more texture to the black lines to give the look of hair more, also I would extend the make up down onto the neck and chest in order to give the piece more depth.

Artist Research - Alexa Meade

Alexa Meade

Alexa Meade is a LA based artist best known for her body painting skills.She has had exhibits at the Saatchi Gallery in London, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in DC, Postmasters Gallery in New York City, Galerie Ivo Kamm in Switzerland, and Ingo Seufert Gallery for Contemporary Photography in Germany. 

Her art has been in exhibitions also featuring the work of 

-Andy Warhol 

-Shepard Fairey

-Banksy

 Her work has received critical acclaim from 

-CNN

-WIRED

-The Wall Street Journal

-Washington Post

-NPR

-The Guardian.

Images of her art are being used to illustrate forthcoming manuscripts by philosophers Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou. Her work is being written into art history textbooks around the world. She has given lectures at the California Institute of the Arts, UC-Berkeley, National Geographic London, WIRED, and the TED Global Conference. Her TED talk “Your Body is my Canvas,” has been viewed nearly 2 million times.

Mercedes-Benz, Denim & Supply Ralph Lauren, and MINI Cooper have commissioned Alexa to create art installations around the world. Her portrait subjects include such individuals of note as triple-Grammy Award winner Gotye.

Jay-Z’s Life & Times made a video about Alexa’s creative process that also captured a sneak peek at one of her side projects: transforming her Los Angeles home into a Funhouse. Other side projects include turning her garage into a camera obscura theater, designing tessellating shape tiles, and making a puzzle for the blind.

  

 

 

Artist Research - Cheryl Ann Lipstreu

Cheryl Ann Lipstreu

Cheryl Ann grew up on an Arabian horse farm in Belews Creek, North Carolina. At a very young age she began drawing, and when introduced to oil paint at age 10, fell in love with painting and the art of making art. She has since continued painting as both a lifelong passion and a professional career. Cheryl Ann looks for beauty in everything she does. Traditional in approach yet extremely personal in application, Cheryl Ann’s figure studies, portraits, landscapes and body paintings are effused with emotion and grace, while the love of her work is evident in every piece and in every brushstroke. She strives to capture the true essence of her subject matter with the reflective soul of the colors of her palette. She has received art degrees from Guilford Technical Community College, Pennsylvania College of Art and Design and the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas in Asheville NC. In addition she has completed private apprenticeships with master painters, Senor Javier Pamplona in Madrid, Spain, Master Fresco painters Ben Long IV and Roger Nelson at the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas, and continued her studies with workshops as well as private lessons from Artists Mr. John Cosby, Mr. Tony Griffin and Triple Crown World Champion Body painters Scott Fray and Madelyn Greco of Livingbrush Studios. Currently Cheryl Ann’s focus is on Impressionism, portraiture, plein air painting, still life, landscapes, commissions, and body paintings. She is developing her own signature style while producing new works. 

Artist Research - Emma Hack

Emma Hack

Emma Hack is an Adelaide-based artist working in the unique medium of body paint installation and photography. Exhibiting extensively throughout Australia since 1999, Emma’s astounding artworks have since captured the attention of collectors and art lovers worldwide.

Within the past year, Emma Hack has held successful solo shows at Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, NYC and London, The Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong, Linton & Kay Galleries, Perth and Bluerider Art in Taipei as well as hugely successful art fairs in Singapore, Brussels, Aspen, The Hamptons, Hong Kong and Milan.

Emma has received great acclaim for her refined body paint camouflage technique; through a combination of painting on canvas, body painting and studio-based photography, her work evokes a rich array of visual narrative and magical realism.

Best known for her Wallpaper series (2005-2010)- in which she painstakingly camouflaged the human form by hand painting her models into the remarkable designs of the late Florence Broadhurst. Emma Hack’s diverse artwork collections draw inspiration from the unique Australian flora and fauna, as well as Oriental influences.

Emma Hack’s collaboration with Grammy award winning musician Gotye resulted in the iconic, award winning music video for Somebody That I Used to Know, which has been viewed by over 550 million people worldwide, raising her profile in the US, UK and Europe. Emma has since worked on major artistic commissions for Motor Accident Commission, South Australia, where she built a sculpture of 17 bodies, painted as a crashed car, again drawing worldwide attention to her craft. Emma’s recent commission for WA Ballet utilised the form of 21 Ballet dancers to create their upcoming program imagery. 

Emma Hack is represented by galleries throughout Australia, as well as London, New York, Singapore, Taipei and Hong Kong. Her work is held in numerous private and corporate collections globally.

 

Artist Research - Gesine Marwedel

Gensine Marwedel

Gensine Marwedel is a German body painter, I could not find very much information about her, but what I did find was in German, I have tried to translate it as best I could.

Gensine was born in Eckernforde but grew up in Dortmund Germany. She graduated in 2005 and moved to India where she volunteered in a children's home. 

From 2005- 2008 she studied Rehabilitation Education at the University of Dortmund.

During her studies she spent several months in India, where she worked in a children's home with handicapped and autistic children.

She also backpacked across the country with henna art.

Since 2009 she has worked as a therapist in Dortmund. 

''As an artist I was used to painting, wall painting and henna but today I mostly focus mostly on the area of body painting, I am entered in international competitions and events I work for companies and paint for events film and television as well as for private clients. The joy of painting and the work with people for me is always first.

Artist Research - Johannes Stotter

Johannes Stötter

Johannes Stötter is artist, musician and fine art body painter. Born and based in South Tyrol (Italy), he spent his early childhood in the high Alps and grew up with 3 brothers and a sister in a family of musicians. He sings, plays violin, whistle and bouzouki in the Celtic Folk band “Burning Mind“, he studied education and philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and was involved in several social projects which he combined with art and music.

As a fully autodidactic artist Johannes developed his painting style and his bodypainting technique without any relation to other bodypainting artists and their work. He joined the international bodypainting community in 2009 at the World Bodypainting Festival in Austria, where he took part at the bodypainting world championship for the first time.

In the following years he won many awards, most notably he was;

 - WORLD CHAMPION 2012, 

- Vice World Champion 2011 and 2014, 

- Italian Champion 2011 and 2013, 

- Winner of the North American Body painting Championship, Atlanta, Georgia, USA 2013 

 - Winner of the “International Fine Art Body painting Award” 2014.

In 2013 he became world famous with his legendary creation of a tropical frog consisting of 5 human bodies, so he made headlines in the world press and was featured in newspapers, magazines and online magazines as New York Post, NewYork Daily News, The Sun, The Times, The Mirror, The Guardian, Dailymail, Bild,Stern, Spiegel, Focus, Süddeutsche Zeitung, View and many more, in TV channels as CNN, BBC, TV Globo, RAI, ZDF, Pro7, RTL, DW, ORF, ntv Japan and many more, as well as in the published books “The Art of Bodypainting” (Peter de Ruiter),“Champions at Heart” (Karala B), “The Human Canvas” (Karala B) and in the Calendar “Painted Bodies” (Weingarten Verlag).

Today Johannes teaches Body painting at the World Body painting Academy – at the WBF (World Body painting Festival) as well as around the world – and Anatomic Body painting at Yoni Academy. He works and exhibits all around the globe in collaboration with his agency wb-production.

Artist Research - Natalie Fletcher

Natalie Fletcher

Natalie Fletcher isn't a highly known artist so I couldn't find an extensive amount of information about her, but this is what her web page says about her... 

''Natalie Fletcher was born in Texas in 1985.  A young Natalie realized, around the age of 5, that drawing was a lot more interesting than Math class, and so it started.  Around the age of 15 she discovered paint.  Little did she know her future and all of her clothes would be covered in it. Natalie moved to Oregon from Texas in 2006 to attend a painting school in Ashland. Oregon had beautiful scenery, a healthy culture and an  outlook of which she took a liking to immediately. In 2010, after graduating from an intense 4-year program, she was presented with a question most people in their mid-twenties are presented with… Now What? What ever she was going to do, she knew it wasn’t going to be in Ashland. So, in 2011 she made a Pin-Up Girl calendar to raise some funds to move. Something about central Oregon was calling to her, so she and her partner moved to Bend. Attempting to find a job, Natalie came across an ad for a body painter. Having little to no experience … she applied. When they requested that she send images of previous work she thought, ” Oh crap, I better paint some bodies!” So she did. She painted 4 bodies, including her own, in a week and sent off the pictures – crossing her fingers. She got the job! After that job, Natalie realized how much she loved it! She loved the interactions and the excitement of painting a human. It was new and fresh and unlike painting on canvas, not a lot of people were doing it in central Oregon. So there it is – Natalie’s risk lead her to finding a passion, and this is just the beginning.''

http://www.artbynataliefletcher.com/about-natalie/

Personally I love Natalie's work the attention to detail amazes me. The way she manages to invlove the background into her images to make them look almost invisible is awe inspiring.