Bodypaint Planning | clairegolbymue

Planning the Painting

I came up with my design based on various images of deers, trying to maniupulate it into a birds-eye view perspective, as that is the angle I am painting to. Obviously I am leaving the horns out of my design, but I need to consider other elements, such as texture.

Sung, H. (201) Poeople. Tigers and Models and Boy Paint, Oh My! [online] 2nd January 2010. Available from:http://www.peoplepets.com/people/pets/article/0,,20493801,00.html Accessed: February 16th 2015]

Experiment

These photos are my experiments with an airbrush to try and create a furry texture for my body paint.

- I tried airbrushing over a fanned out brush, as I thought the colour would spray through the hairs creating small, disappated lines. I'm not sure why but I think the aquacolours just built up in the brush and the air just caused that to fly off in blobs all over the surface. Nothing like the effect I wanted.

- I then tried just spraying the airbrush along a side of paper to create defined lines (like the tiger whiskers), but they looked very unnatural

I think a matte finish for this piece is the most appropriate finish, but I need to consider some kind of texture for making it look slightly hairy or furry. I searched for youtube tutorials but I couldn't find anything. Looking this tiger body paint, I think he may have used an airbrush to

create such fine, smooth looking lines. I can see around the longer hairs around the face how using darker and lighter shades of the same white tone has helped to create dimension by building up layers. I like the orange and black furry area between the eyes - how the black colour is integrated into the orange by using small patches. Considering this work is a big piece, there is a lot of detailing, making it very successfully realistic. I was considering leaving out a lot of detail because bodypainting is typically viewed from a distance, but seeing this, as well as Johannes work have shown me that using more detail only serves to make the piece even more realistic.

I think any texture for this piece will have to be created entirely with painting techniques, as I can't think of any other materials (such as fullers earth) which could aid in creating this texture.

Maybe creating some templates might help to be used in conjunction with airbrushing.

I then tried to create organic lines by tearing them into a sheet of paper, spraying a layer, moving the paper and spraying again to build up colour and texture. I then went in and added some longer lines with another sheet of paper. I think this looks better, but the jaggedness of the paper creates wonky lines. While the lines shouldn't be straight, they should have a smooth curve and direction.

I found the best way to create the fur texture was simple to build up colour by layering and overlapping with a big fan brush using the dry brush method. I will re-do my body-paint utilising this method.