Transform Your Look with Body Painting
Body painting is probably one of the oldest forms of make-up; it has existed for thousands of years. Body painting was done for various reasons, ranging from ceremonial use, camouflage, intimidating enemies and more.
Body painting can be used for a number of different effects. If you want to disguise yourself as a character with, for example, blue or green skin, you can use body paint to give yourself that skin colour. You can also use body paint to paint patterns on your natural skin, so that it looks like ceremonial or warrior body paint. Or you can use your body as a canvas for a complete painting with lots of details.
Here we cover the basic principles of body painting.
What do you need?
-Mild soap
-Setting spray
-Body paint
-Water
-Sponges
-Brushes
How to do body painting, the basics:
Step 1:
Before you apply the paint to your skin, it's important to prepare your skin first. Otherwise the paint won't adhere well to your skin or the paint won't last as long as you'd like.
Start by showering and wash your skin with mild soap. You don't need to over-exfoliate or scrub, you just need to wash away the dirt and oil.
Step 2:
Start by applying a thin layer of setting spray to the parts of your skin where you want to apply the body paint. This will help the body paint last longer.
Step 3:
You can now start applying the body paint.
Depending on the type of body paint you want to do, you can now approach it in different ways.
If you plan to have simple body paint, mostly just a different skin colour, you can start by building up the basic colour. You'll need some water to dampen your sponge or brush, it doesn't need to be soaking wet. Rub the damp applicator over your paint until you have a good amount of paint on it. You can now apply the paint to your skin and build up the layers until you have even coverage. You can also use a body paint spray to build up the basis, and even out the colour with regular body paint and sponges/brushes.
If you don't want to paint your entire skin, but only want to paint some patterns, you can paint your design using the same techniques. It might be a good idea to sketch your design on paper first, so you have a guide to follow.
Step 4:
Once your basis is nice and even, you can start adding shadows, highlights and other details. By applying a darker shade to the parts of your skin that naturally have shadows, you can create more depth in your body paint and make it look more realistic. For example, to add shadow, place them in the hollows of your cheeks, under your jawline and along the folds of your muscles.
With a lighter shade you can add highlights to the parts of your skin that catch more light, such as the apples of your cheeks, the bridge of your nose and the more protruding parts of your muscles and body.
If your character needs any other details, such as freckles, certain textures or patterns, you can apply those last. Use smaller brushes for these details so they look subtle and natural.
Step 5:
Once you're done with the body painting, apply another thin layer of fixing spray to protect the paint. Setting spray helps prevent sweat and water from ruining your hard work.
To remove the body paint, just jump back in the shower and rinse off the paint with warm water and soap. Depending on the paint and sometimes even the colour, you may need to scrub a bit to get it off.
