Body Art and Craft Paint

Crappy craft paint tubes littered the front yard. If you were to look under the tree in the front of my house on any given day during the summer, you would see about ten children under the age of twelve, each with acrylic paint quite literally up to their armpits. I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eye Peas was played to full volume, and some of the kids are bobbing along as they begin to paint up their legs. There you would see visions of rainbows, flowers, and superhero symbols done to the best ability of an elementary school student. This is where my love of body art really took off.

There was an old snowman print plastic tablecloth underneath them, and atop that, about a hundred different tubes of craft paint. Only giggles could be heard, and at some point, everyone seemed almost hysterical with happiness. There I sat, realistic blue and purple flowers painted on my wrists, watching the young artists work hard.

I realize that I have always been a body artist in some shape or form. Always. In my early childhood, if I wasn’t creating projects out of the scrapbooking paper box and the junk drawer supplies that I had monopolized, I was painting or drawing on my skin. Body art became a massive hobby in junior high school until college.

Tattoo-like acrylics on tan skin carried a specific form of temporal beauty, while I knew that the spiraled suns and daisies won’t remain the into the evening. There was significance within the very idea of using my body as a canvas; my mind thought that the very home for my soul could be decorated. It was somehow humbling.

So yes, some form of craft paint were first, as far as body painting went. And though I sketched like mad with my cousin and best friend Braxton as a child, and of course I went through periods of crayons and colored pencils, my love of acrylic painting came fast and through Walmart craft paint. I had tubes and tubes of the stuff, thanks to my sweet Grandma Diane who also liked to craft and paint various mediums.

The hobby of mine to decorate the arms or hands of others often also popped up in situations like sitting in a church service. Friends and their parents would leave with sunflowers drawn with ballpoint pens on their wrists. I never cared that any of these mediums, pen or paint, are bad for your skin, I just never cared. All I cared about was having fun with whoever was with me... friends from school, neighborhood kids, my sister, my mom. Anyone and everyone who would sit with me and join me and doodling anything up my body, usually flowers or something colorful. When it came to acrylics and craft paint, that particular medium is how I taught others to paint.

There started to be some level of recognition from strangers for my body art. People would stop me at Walmart, recognize me, and ask about it. As I’ve aged. I have found myself painting on my body alone, less abstractly, while I watch movies. The images are often realistic animals or movie characters, which has been unique and fun. It has come to be an experience that I have treasured over time and I will still occasionally pull out my box of craft paint to decorate myself. It’s another way to show myself and my body love.