Body painting interlude, no.1
Hot on the heels and wheels of being body painted for the 2015 London Naked Bike Ride, I was back with Feel Good Painted for a lower-key, informal body art session.
For Amanda, it was an opportunity to experiment with ideas, without any pressure to deliver a particular finished design for a customer. For me, it was the chance to learn about the materials, techniques, processes and durations of body painting.
We arranged the session for the Friday immediately after the bike ride, and agreed to work on a composition with a ‘jungle’ theme. This would allow various elements to be doodled together with no fixed end design in mind. We would see where the flow took us over the course of two or three hours.
Amanda began with lilies, then added a snake, followed by a hummingbird and some foliage, and finally a small frog with a big orange hand. Some details she liked, some she didn’t like, but this was the very point – it was about discovery, whilst also being rather relaxing in a therapeutic kind of way.
On this occasion the artwork adorned just my back. At the end we took a few photos before I pulled on a T-shirt and headed home. My shower that night saw me standing in a pool of green rather than the muddy brown that usually seems to follow body art.
It had been another enjoyable experience – certainly one to be repeated.
steve ritter 