Color Body Painting Project

Instead of painting nine color compositions in monochromatic, complimentary, and analogous schemes, our group decided to incorporate performance art with color. We chose to do this because all of us had already done something very similar to this color mixing exercise in high school, so we then proposed the body paint idea. We used non toxic tempera paint to paint color compositions onto our skin in varying arrangements. We designated each of our four group members for a role; Chris would be monochromatic, Bart would be analogous, and Paulette and I would be complimentary. We designated that I would get the paints by next week, and then that class we would paint each other, and present it near the end of class.
I bought the paints which totaled about thirteen dollars, and we will then split the cost between the four of us. The next class we began to sketch out what we planned to paint on each other. We painted Bart first, and decided that analogous seemed to be the most "wild", or varied, color scheme, so we painted him with both geometric and organic shapes, including facial warpaint, in a variety of red analogous colors. The next up was Paulette and myself, since we were both the complimentary scheme. For this composition we used bands of tape to section off our arms from the elbow to the hand. On my left arm the band closest to my elbow we painted full green, and for each band getting closer to my hand, we added more red paint to the green, finally reaching a muddy brown at my hand. We did the same to Paulette except with red on her arm. The final person was Chris, who we used a monochromatic composition on. We wanted to make it very geometric, so we used removable tape to section off portions of his back according to basic anatomical structure. For example, we taped about twelve small squares down a line on top of his spine, and three triangular "ribs" on either side. As Paulette taped, I painted varying shades and tints of red. After we were all complete we stood in front of the white wall to present it. Paulette stood to my right and we both help our arms so that our fists met in the center, where the color was exactly the same, and Chris turned around and stood facing the wall. I feel that this exercise helped me in my Fine Art major because it not only taught me more about color, but also about performance art. In fact I found this to be more helpful in learning about performance art than the activities we completed last semester. Overall, I really enjoyed it and found it to be fun and educational project.