Ian Bell Summer 1999
You should contact a theatrical makeup or stage lighting company.
Ask about water-based ultra violet face paints. I use
Kryolan
(Suppliers)
and Fardel UV brands.
UK sources include
Charles Fox
and
Screen Face.
Outside UK try Arjans.
Stage, disco, and some office lighting suppliers can provide "Black Light" flourescent tubes
in 2 or 4 foot lengths relatively inexpensively.
Links to UV-related sites can be found here.
Fuji 200-ASA colour slide, hand held camera, long exposure.
That varies. I usualluy allow about five hours for just one side of a body
or eight hours for whole body.
This includes breaks and the photo shoot.
You can sleep in the paints for a few nights but i don't advise it if you aren't going
clubbing in them or whaetever because such paints clog the pores.
The colours look drab in daylight anyway.
If the water is heated to body temperature then not very much.
However most models enjoy the sensuality of the experience, prefering cool water
and carressive brush strokes.
Sometimes i plan it out in advance but usually i intuit up to a certain
point and then a design sort of appears, as though i'd been painting it
without knowing it. Once its there i spend the rest of the time filling
it in. Remember Rolf Harris: "Can you tell what it is yet?"? It sometims
feels strangley like some innerself is playing exactly that game with me.
The black light itself is strange. Some people don't like looking at the
lights themselves but i enjoy gazing at the bulb trying to fathom where
the light is coming from. Its a very peculiar light. Crystals go
strangley blurred in it. The colours of the flourescing paints are
phenomenal. Photographs barely begin to capture it. They are qualatively
unlike any other colours. I think its the modern equivalent of medieval
amazement at stained glass. Sunlight through coloured glass was the
psychaedelia of the middle ages. Now we are used to bright colours all
around us, despoiled and exploited to sell and beguile. UV flourescence
has a fresh clarity bourne from perceptual novelty. It cannot currently
be reproduced in glossy magazines or on cinema or TV screens so it hasn't
yet been hijacked.
Because people are unfamiliar with the colours, you often get amazed
reactions. UV is pretty common at raves now so people there are more used
to it but bodypainting is still novel too so my club-going models have
dropped some jaws in passing.
You don't understand yantras so much as empower them within yourself
ISTM. Yantras are somewhat arbitary symbols representing intractibly
convoluted bioplasmic entities and the attitudes and concepts attributed
thereto.
All magick, and much medicine, exploits the effect of belief. Belief
manifests by control of the concious and unconcious. Yantras are
thoughtforms for the concious mind to loose into the maelstrom and to
endevour to impose onto the subconcious machinations.
They don't. Their concious use by the painter and the awareness of their
use by the painted may cause either or both to make progress in their
meditation. If you believe in subtle energies then it can constitute
energy work if you will it so. There is also the potential role of
shamanic talisman. I keep an open mind as to whether astral fields and
entities exist outside the imagination. It can sometimes be useful to act
as if they do and when so doing, yantras are potent.
About six years,
No. Not even to 'O' (now GSE) level (UK rudimentary examinations).
I studied mathematics at university where i developed
an interest in photography and subsequently learnt body painting techniques by
painting people at raves and studying celtic, australian aboriginal, and yantric art.
Yes. But please email me the URL of your link. Note that a link via bigfoot
indirection (www.bigfoot.com/~iancgbell/bodyart) is preferable to a direct link.
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