Body painting is an art that has existed for many years. South American tribes used body painting to create their own identities, to intimidate their enemies, to hunt and even to carry out different rituals. Body painting also has a cosmetic use, since these painted-on fabrics made from natural ingredients helped them protect their skin from the sun and mosquitos.
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In other cultures, body painting is mainly used during festivals. However, this type of paint used to be made industrially and with artificial ingredients that were quite damaging to the skin in comparison to those made by tribes. Over the years, chemical body paints have been perfected and paints have been created that aren’t too dangerous for our skin and are easier to get off.
From make-up to body painting
Body painting emerged as an art that has brought together painters and make-up artists but has also graduated so that it can now be used on the entire body.
Some body painting artists have used this art to support a cause or create illusionsby being able to blend someone into a background or make them imitate an object with only a little paint applied to a naked or half-naked body.
This body make-up technique has had so much success that festivals have already been created such as World Body Painting Festival, celebrated in Austria. In this body painting festival that lasts for days, professionals and ‘amateurs’ of body painting come together, but many curious people also attend to witness this new form of art.
Surprising body painting artworks
There are a lot of professionals that have dared to move this work of art onto the human body, but one in particular that we can’t stop watching is the Serbian make-up artist specializing in body painting, Mirjana Kika Milosevic, who does her art on her own body.
On her YouTube channel ‘Kika Studio’ the Serbian artist posts all her surprising artworks where she plays with backgrounds and different objects around her to create incredible optical effects.
One particular artist of this persuasion created a piece that followed the style of Mirjana and it got surprising results. This artist didn’t feel the need to paint her entire body like the girl in the video, but only painted the bottom half of a woman’s body and up to her belly, which for some of us would be like being in a horror movie.
