Imp in Flight

Body Painting By Kevin C Mason

Imp in flight is starting to becoming one of my favorite paintings. The whole idea of the painting started from my Wife’s nickname of “Imp” as ”Impolite and Evil”. This of corse was the nickname that she carried into my bodypainting Podcast “Coloring outside the lines”.

With that as my inspiration I started painting. Painting the wings was easy. Dragons wings is something that I have been working on ever sense I realized I could scribble on paper. The background and choice of colors however was a bit more of a challenge .  I Chose green for the body and the “fingers” of the wings, Dark green for the webbing as Blue for the Armband and the Background a deep brick red. I wanted the skin to have a texture that was a little different .So I mixed a few different shades of green together and added the bodypaint with a sponge. I was not interested in a scale like look but I did not want a human texture.

The Tattoo on the arm was something that showed up after the fact and was not part of the original concept. When I painted the blue tattoo on the arm it was way too bright. One of the tricks that I learned is if you put some baby powder over body paint it can subdue the color giving the effect like a tatoo that has been around for awhile.

The model was very easy to work with ... Hell I married her. At this point we had been married for almost a year. The problem with painting on my wife is that the normal professional barrier that I set up is non-existent .. So the entire time my wife was messing with me.  Somewhere in existence I have video of the creation of this bodypainting but I’m not able to find it . All-well !

Getting the hair to fly backwards is actually a camera trick we had the model lean back so her hair would drape down .. then we turned the photo 90 degrees. This gave the illusion of movement or flight. This piece is also rare because I actually used photo  Manipulation to remove the second wing. (I never use photoshop other then cropping a color correction)

To see the Rest of Kevin's Body Painting Gallery