Welcome to the world of body painting! Here I share with you my process of Skeleton, along with inspiration and challenges I've faced during this artistic endeavour. I hope this blog brings you closer to understanding and interpreting art, while simultaneously getting to know me and my work.
Skeleton
Modelling by Cass Hazel. Photography & body painting by Kas Rea. Located at CG Imaging studio.
The Process
Skeleton was one of my earlier body painting photo shoots, taken in 2016. At this point in my artist life, I had only painted a small handful of people, most of which were mainly women and children. I wanted to expand my audience, so I asked my friend Cass to come into the studio. Using the skeleton, I wanted to show people a slightly darker and more serious side of art. In addition,
Inspiration
I also thought these photos may be good for Halloween body painting promotion. I had been watching the Nightmare Before Christmas, so perhaps this is where the skeleton inspiration came from, although it is not intended to be a representation of Jack Skellington.
Photoshop & colour editing
As seen in the images above, I edited the photos mainly using a monochromatic colour pallete, with plenty of tones of black, white grey and dull blues and greens. I chose this pallete for two reasons. Firstly, Cass has naturally red hair and beard, which was a tad distracting to the body paint. The monochromatic pallete helped tone the hair colour down. Secondly, when I think of a skeleton I think of death, darkness, and coldness, which the monochromatic colours accentuates. To add a punch of fierceness, I put in red eyes in some of the shots. To me and many other artists I know, the eyes draw you in and have the ability to show how a person is feeling. In these photos, I wanted a sense of anger, power, mystery and perhaps even sorrow. When I get behind the camera, I want to tell a story, or sometimes the story comes to me after the shoot. In this case, the story came after the shoot, and what I see when I look at "Skeleton" is a fictional character who is surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, and is somewhat of a bad-ass.
This photo shoot was a lot of fun. Cass's partner, Gen is a lifelong friend and she came into the studio that day, along with a photography friend Scotty. The shoot was relaxed, we all flowed well working together and I am also quite happy with the final results.
Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts, drop me a comment below.
- Kas Rea Visual Arts