Tag Archives: animal silhouettes

NY Makeup Show Bodypainting — Bodypainter or Makeup Artist?

by Christopher Agostino

This was my second time painting a body at The Makeup Show New York for Kryolan Professional Makeup and it was an exhilarating experience. It was also great to get a chance to work with Rebecca again, my model. I think of her as a muse, for she has always encouraged me to take chances and helped me develop the designs I paint on her through our discussions as we paint. I believe that bodypainting is a collaborative art between the painter and the model, and Becca is a great partner in the effort. We started painting at 10:30 and completed the full body in five hours. I did get the chance I was hoping for to realize a better iteration of this Animal Body design I have explored over the years. I changed the design to flow better around the body, including changing the direction of that movement, and I came up with better face design than previously. Given that this was a commercial gig, painting in the booth of a makeup company to demonstrate the product and draw attention, I’d rather be painting a design I am familiar with and confident in than trying something completely new (as Becca and I did the following day in a  studio session). This design also gave me a chance to show off the beautifully bright colors that are the reason why Kryolan’s Aquacolors are my makeup of choice.

James and Jessica interviewed attendees on their reaction to a painted body

With James McElligott there filming for his documentary we drew some additional attention. He also did some interviews with people that were stopping to watch, and, even though we were at a Makeup Show, there were a surprising number of people talking about how unusual it was to see a fully painted body. The one episode of Face Off that I saw was when they had to paint a body and I was surprised by how uncomfortable some of the contestants were with the concept of body paint, how unfamiliar it was to them. It’s a reminder to me that bodypainting still has an ability to shock and surprise people and, although I may be immersed in a world of painted people, what I do is unusual.

Which adds to the excitement of painting at The Makeup Show, for as I said to Rebecca while we were setting up, it makes me feel like “a real professional”. Face and body painting isn’t the kind of job that shows up on lists of professions for career day but at the Makeup Show I can feel a connection as a specialist within a small part of a large industry. I never think of myself as a makeup artist — understanding the level of expertise and training that comes with that title — but painting in that context I kinda have to. And I know my limitations: I can’t make a women’s eyes look beautiful for a wedding unless she wants cat’s eyes. I wouldn’t assume that the serious makeup artists at the show, doing fashion or TV and movies, would have seen me as part of the same profession, maybe more like something on a fringe, yet there was no lack of camaraderie and plenty of positive reaction to my process and the completed painting.

Rebecca is a makeup artist, so she was much more savvy than I about the vendors and the products, and when the painting was completed she had the additional pleasure of meeting Tate, her favorite contestant on Face Off.

Becca with Tate from Face Off

Is a bodypainter a makeup artist by definition? I think that is something for someone with a more legitimate claim than me to decide. Certainly a makeup artist can be a body painter, can include body painting within their everyday set of tasks for whatever job they are at. And many bodypainters come into this specialty as trained makeup artists and can handle cosmetics and make beautiful eyes — once while watching Nathalie Simard paint a fantastically theatrical full body design I was struck by the delicacy with which she did her model’s eye makeup.  When I think about it at all, I think of myself as a visual artist that paints on people.

www.kryolan.com

http://www.agostinoarts.com

See my fine art body painting at  https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/body-painting/

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NY Makeup Show Body Painting – Animal Body – Pt.1 animal silhouettes

From my book "Transformations! The Story Behind the Painted Faces"

by Christopher Agostino

How to use Animal Silhouttes for Face & Body Painting

photograph by Rich Johnson

At the New York Makeup Show this weekend I’ll be painting a body as a demonstration for Kryolan Professional Makeup. With the opportunity of full day for the painting and an excellent model to paint I’ve decided to re-visit a design I’ve never yet quite realized as intended, the “Animal Body”.  In 2006, I painted the design above for my book as a reference image for the pages about using silhouettes —  really more of a cheat sheet than a body design. At the Face and Body Art International Convention (FABAIC) a few weeks later I tried wrapping the animals around the body when an unexpected opportunity to paint a model came up — a more effective design, but we didn’t have enough time to complete it. I did get some nice foots of the torso, including one from Rich Johnson we’ve used as a logo image. Since then, I’ve done pieces  of it and some variations, and for the Makeup Show I’ve got a plan for the full body.

http://www.themakeupshow.com/makeupshow/NY/index.html

www.kryolan.com    http://www.fabaic.com/

Where does an idea come from? I’d done a parade of realistic animals on someone at the St. Francis Day Fair to capture the march of the animals into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan for the annual blessing of the animals.

I also used them in black silhouettes on the side of a bowl I made to commemorate my wedding with Lorraine in 1991. Later they walked around Lorraine’s belly to celebrate the coming birth of our son. Putting the animal silhouettes against a sunset came afterwards.   I’d seen a wonderful painted face with a black pterodactyl against a red sky, sent to me on a greeting card from England, and also an image of shadowy giraffes in an African sunset. So my animal parade became silhouettes against the sunset , the first time I painted it was on myself in the foto from 1992 that’s in the banner at the top of this webpage.

For a facepainter, these simplified pictures, or icons, can be used to add an animal to a scenic design. You can find source images in pictographs, pottery and painted decorations on all sorts of traditional art objects —or you can invent your own icons.

Click here for a pdf cheat sheet of animal pictographs:  AnimalSilhouettes_facepainting_agostinoarts

To simplify an animal down to an iconic symbol, use a design incorporating or exaggerating a significant feature of the animal or use a silhouette of the full animal’s shape. Most animals can be recognized by their shape: for example, a snake can be drawn as a simple S-curve line with a forked tongue, and pretty much any four legged animal shape with a long neck reads as a giraffe.

You can paint the shape of an animal in one solid color. It’s an easier, faster and often more effective way to represent an animal for a face design than a full-color, detailed approach. Most often I place animal silhouettes in black against a brightly colored background, but you can also use white animals on dark backgrounds (like dolphins in a blue ocean) or make your animal shapes in colors (like sky blue geese flying across a sunset). The body at the top of this post, the “Iconography Body” done for my book, was intended to show many of these ways I’ve been using for silhouettes on faces.

Once you can paint the silhouette you can add selected details to emphasize the significant features of an animal (like the teeth of a dinosaur), or add elements for more purely decorative effects (like putting yellow spots on a black gecko). Remember that an image doesn’t need to be realistic to communicate meaning,  you can adjust it or distort it to better fit the features and make a better design.

http://www.agostinoarts.com

From FABAIC 2006. Bodies painted by (from left to right) Nathalie Simrad, Raphaelle Fieldhouse, me and Jinny.

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