March 2012
Yay once again for being booked by the HK Youth Arts Foundation to lead their artist team at this fantastic sporting (and costume) event, the HK Rugby 7’s! It’s an awful lot of work; I have to sort out (via a stock list from them) what to order from UK face & body art suppliers to last the team for the entire 3 day event (and for other events that year), then get it shipped out or packed to go with me.
As soon as I arrive in HK, I have to sort and clean the old kits and refill/ make the new ones. New stencil sets of the main logos and motifs for all the countries and their teams have to be cut for each artist. New photo/ design sheets for each artists and signs the public are made, and a training day is held for the actual painters.
This year they also wanted a workshop for school-kids who would be painting 100’s of other children for a Circus-themed Mardi- Gras event YAF were running later that year. Yuk, clowns, they scare me 
But the kids did really well.
And of course I was stuffing down as much of my favourite local foods as I could- salty fish-and-pork fried rice, dim sum… I almost cried as my favourite sushi bar had closed though:(
I also had to squeeze in some glitter art on people who couldn’t make it to the stadium early enough to be painted by me before the queuing started – they came to my hotel and I stuck their donations into the charity boxes next day. They wanted to have ‘patches’ of glitter to match their animal themed costumes, on their shoulders and necks and face, mainly – frog, reptile and giraffe I think it was.
Meeting the crew early at the staff entrance to the stadium is always interesting, as there are so many different things to see. This year I saw all the chinese lion/ dragon dance teams setting up. They looked amazing on the pitch for the opening and closing ceremonies.
After the scandal a paper created a couple of years back I have stuck to the promo bodypaint being on a guy or a girl with a top on. This year, last minute, they nabbed me a student of YAf’s called Max who spent a quick hour stood on a chair whilst I did a fast dragon on him. The horns are just folded paper but look effective for a last minute thing! Boy with the dragon tattoo!
Lots of painting…
We painted the usual team faces, mash-ups and pretty/ scary things…
…. but the strangest request I have EVER had goes to this man who got passed along the painters to me! He wanted a Ninja round-housing a boxing dinosaur. I did it!
I finally me Karen Yiu who I have sent some clients to after I left HK as she is based there. She very kindly took me out for dim sum and gave me some amazing moon cakes too! Thank you!
We were allowed to pack away to watch the finals (also because our stands take up prime viewing spots the public needed).
So I finally get to see the costumes. We did NOT paint the smurfs here – note the bad quality paint has just vanished leaving a stain!
And aren’t these carved safety helmets amazing? The Welsh guys had asked the people they were working with (in Africa?) to do them as that’s how local miners etc decorated theirs! Sadly I recognised a lady with the strange spotty sunburn as one of the bunch I had glitter-tattoo’d on Friday night – she forgot the glitter acts like sunblock and got a bit toasted in the rugby stands!
We did well in the media again, lots of filming and a nice big piece in the SCMP, the huge English paper there. Gareth, my avatar from about 4 years ago, finally got to be a published model!
Body Painting by Cat 