Benten The Japanese Goddess of art

Bodypainting from mortal to Goddess

Benten is the Japanese goddess of Art. One of Japan's Seven Lucky Gods. with two arms holding a lute;  I Her messenger is the snake, so she is sometimes shown mounted on a serpent or dragon.

This painting was surely a challenge . The idea was to paint the model to look like she was wearing a kimono. The difficult part with that is that kimono tend to not be form fitting. This would make any attempt to paint the kimono only on the body seem to be out of place. What I did was paint the flowing parts of the Kimono on the background then using the same pattern painted an open Kimono (Kimono are always worn in layers) on the body. Being a Member of the SCA ( Kinda Like Renaissance faire) I have learned how to sew a Japanese kimono. So my knowledge of how it should look really helped out with this painting .

The Lotus flower , Biwa and the Dragons head are all made of cardboard. I have found that using cardboard cutout props to be a fun and rewarding addition to my art . The biwa was the most difficult resulting in over 4 hours of research and 3 hours of painting.

The other part of this painting that seemed to be fitting was the model was the gallery owner of where the painting was created. She had never modeled for this kind of art before and her excitement seemed to add to the finial product .

I chose to paint the dragon blue due to the fact I was running out of any other color. Sometimes the choices are made out of desperation not creative know how .. The other colors of the painting were chosen to work with the Dragon .