Picture Blog #3 : Body Art

We all know that an artist begins his painting with a blank canvas.

An art canvas is conventionally a piece of thick cloth mounted on a wooden frame. However, to an artist, anything can be a canvas. In this picture blog, we will look at the use of human bodies as art canvas.

Body painting is an old art form, probably date back to the cavemen era. Today, some indigenous people in places such as South America or Africa still paint their bodies in the traditional way.

Modern body painting became popular in the 1960s. Due to obvious reasons, one can easily relate body painting to nudity. Understandably, there has been endless debate on whether body painting can appropriately be considered as an art form in the first place.

We do not have to go into that argument for I will scope this picture blog to only hand painting.

Hand painting is an off-shoot of body painting. It involves the application of paints on hands which are held still in the position required by the artist. The painted hands usually look like an animal but it could also be other objects as well.

Guido Daniele (Italy) is one of the famous body artists. He has created many amazing animal paintings on hands which he called "Handimals". If I were to leave this unsaid, some of you may not have realised that the following paintings are done on 'hand canvas'.



From this first set of pictures of a cat, you get the idea of how Guido Daniele's detailed paint work plus the precise position held by the hand model give you a realistic look of the animal.

Now, let's admire the rest of the very awesome "Handimals".


















In this last picture of a snake, you get to see how Guido Daniele created it at a live demo. Watch this video.

“Life is a great big canvas,
and you should throw all the paint on it you can”
~Danny Kaye~
(American Actor 1913-1987)