Baby Batman-Girl Nash

So my preggo sister Sarah, and my nephew Lochlan, and bro-in-law Cory, came to visit from Hawaii last spring... I of course couldn't wait to get my henna cone on her belly!  Lochlan thinks his baby sister's name should be Baby Batman Girl Nash.... I think his parents will MAYBE come up with something a wee bit more traditional when the time comes (which is now quickly approaching!). 

I decided to stick with the underwater theme that I used before Lochlan was born, but instead of Lochlan's Octopus' Garden, I went with a Frilly Koi.

I started out doing this design in front of the big picture windows at my parents house.... I had to hurry and finish, as a big storm and possible tornado were headed our way, so I took the pictures and we headed downstairs to a safer part of the house.  As we were waiting out the storm, Sarah was lying down in the hallway, I ran upstairs, grabbed my henna cone, because I couldn't resist adding more and more details, as you can see here in the "after" picture.

( For more info on Deborah's face paint, body painting, temporary tattoos, and henna designs, please see her website at www.OhioBodyArt.com )

Na'vi siting in Kent at TAAB

I taught and demonstrated some Body Painting at Empire in Kent last month for the Traditional Arts of the Altered Body (TAAB) conference.  One of the paintings that I did was about the potential use of Body Painting on stage and screen, so to keep topical I did a Na'vi character from the recent movie "Avatar".

My model Courtney, was so wonderful!  It was her first time modeling, first time being painted, but she was very into it.  She did her hair in a hundred braids to fit the theme and she looked gorgeous!  When we walked around Kent looking for places to take pictures she got a lot of attention from passersby, and all of the little kids wanted to talk to her.  She couldn't have been more popular if she were in a Disney character costume!

Outer Banks Body Paint 2009

My family spends every Thanksgiving in the Outerbanks of North Carolina. My sister and her family came from Hawaii, and I got to use her as a canvas while we were there!

It was a very cold day, yet she was a great sport to go out on the deck for the photo shoot with no complaints.

Mayan Jaguar Warrior

The theme for the Body Painting Competition at Bodyssey in Toronto this year (April 2009) was "Mystery". I decided to translate that as the Mystery of the Ancient Maya, and came up with this Jaguar Warrior painting. We were given 4 and a 1/2 hours to paint, actually, the doors opened to the room at 4 1/2 hours before the end time, so our set up was included in that time period! That is NOT a lot of time to paint an entire body! But this short period did one thing for me.... I have never been more organized for a painting! I set up split cakes to deal with some of my shading and striated areas, and tried very very hard to stick to my time break downs.

My model was Jennifer Malo, a good friend of mine, who is also a painter, and she was very helpful in reminding me to paint faster! My paint area was positioned right next to Lucie Broulliard, who has won many many awards at the World Body Painting Competition, so it was pretty intimidating... I kept thinking, I have to paint faster, and I have to paint better!

There were a few things that I didn't get done on this painting: I wanted to do a little more to the gold accessories, make it more molten and more 3-D, I didn't get the shadows done that I wanted, and there was a detail that I had to leave out. But, I was super happy with the jade breast plates, the turquoise/jade necklace and belt, and the jaguar pelt!

The best part of this painting is that it garnered me 10th place in a competition full of Big Guns in the body paint world!

Jamming with Mark Reid

For those of you not familiar with the who's who of Face and Body Painting, Mark Reid is one of the best. He's won or placed very highly in the World Body Painting Competition each time he's attended, and he's a sought after instructor at all of the conventions. He's also a great guy and a good friend of mine. He was in Columbus early this year for a class and we got together with a few other painters and had a "jam". I was thrilled with my body painting that day, and even happier when I saw this picture that he sent me of our two models together.

Mine has the red orchids and Mark's has the purple irises. Can you tell where the two women meet?

Art Gone Wild....

.....was the theme for the 2009 Face and Body Art International Convention, and therefore the Body Painting competition followed. I was unsure of what I was going to paint until the morning of, but with the help of my assistant Cindy Farslow, I was able to pull off this Keith Haring inspired painting.

The "Harings" are escaping from their painting into the world, they are "Art Gone Wild".

The World Body Painting Competition 2009 -My Second

Boy oh Boy! Was this year different! Remy and I had quite a trip.

Remy had been studying abroad in Prague (fiction writing) for 5 weeks, so he met me in Venice when that was done, to join me on a cruise where I was hired to be the onboard face painter. We had a marvelous time being together while cruising the Adriatic and Aegean. This is me in Dubrovnik Croatia, and Remy in Santorini Greece.

After the cruise we lugged our stuff through Northern Italy, staying a few days in Padua and Verona, and then into Austria. We were so excited to see all of our friends whom we'd met the year before!

But, this is when it got tense. I had decided to mail a package to Clarissa who was modeling for us again this year, and after hours and hours of dealing with Austrian import department, and paying them an exorbitant fee for my own belongings, I finally got my paints and headdress stuff the day before our competition! I want to thank Mehron and Wolfe FX for helping me out in my time of need!

On the day of the Semi-Pro competition, it was very cold and raining, and the festival grounds had lost power, so it was near impossible for many of the competitors to work, because the airbrush and special effects entrants needed power, and because that is cruel punishment for naked models! There was a lot of discussion going on about what to do, and our start time was delayed several times. In the end, the artist sharing a tent with me found a kerosene heater which helped us and our models immensely.

I had written out a big sheet of paper with a break down of what elements of the painting we were going to do in each half hour block of our 6 hour time frame..... when we got to the fifth hour, we found out that they had cut our time by an hour! We had never heard! Our neighbors knew because it had been announced in German, but not in English. Oh! How upsetting! We decided to plug on through, and finish our design and take our punches as they came for going over the alotted time.

The theme this year was poetry, and we settled on using Beatles Lyrics as our inspiration. Once again Clarissa really came through for us. Once she got back the use of her limbs (after standing still in the cold and wet for 6 hours she was a little stiff!) she was wonderful in the photography area, doing some wonderful movement and yoga poses to show off our painting. There was so much wonderful art this year, definitely steeper competition for us, and we placed as number 11 this year, much to our satisfaction.