Jan 2013
I’m a bit late putting this up as its another paint we did early on and had to keep quiet until it was launched at Paintopia.
We needed an image to promo the date & theme – ‘Vintage’ – of Paintopia 2014. As we’d used girls for 2012 &2013, it only seemed fair to get a boy on, and of course Laurence is at the top of our model list. After lots of discussions a ‘Mr Darcy’ look to suit the look of Dunston Hall, the location, seemed best.
Laurence kindly drove up from Bristol to meet us there one very old and snowy day in January. Snuggly in our painty room (with friendly staff popping in with drinks all the time), Jennie, Di (of Frozen Photography) and I nattered away whilst painting LL.
Jenn & I used Cameleon colours- browns and golds mainly – for the jacket and trousers. Gold overlaid with a deep red did the waistcoat and I used a BAM stencil for the patterning.
Jennie then added a tiny gold dot of Glitzer gel to each segment of the ‘brocade’. LL was wearing flip-lops, so we painted his feet and shins to look like black boots, again with Cameleon. Jenn was a wee bit nervous as she’d never got to paint LL before.
Sadly whilst sewing on the ‘tails’ to his outer set of pants she got a bit shaky and is still living down having poked his rear with a needle!
One of the best moments was taking LL down to hotel reception to ask if they would mind us closing the original old front door (one of the main entrances) to have LL photo’d outside against it.
The manageress said yes, of course, but when we painted him could we please be aware of other guests so as not to shock them. Silence as we all turned to look at LL… and she realised he WAS painted.
That was a bit of a draw-back of painting even half-decent clothes on to people, actually, as we realised later its too easy to fool people into thinking he was in a real suit – they missed seeing the bodypaint!
This got onto some Steampunk page and went a bit viral. Some of the comments were very silly – people refusing to believe it was all paint, saying he was wearing trousers and boots (nope just knickers and flipflops and a hat!) and others wanting to know how we painted on the hat. DUH people, really??? :)))
Body Painting by Cat 