Fun at the Bristol Harbour Festival 2009

On the 1st & 2nd August 2009 the Cats Whiskers face painting team participated in the Bristol Harbour Festival in the children's area on Queen's Square. Although the weather looked a little suspect for the Saturday the crowds still came and we all had great fun painting the children's and adults faces during the weekend as well as doing some temporary tattoos. Here are some of the pictures taken at the event showing the team at work and play and some of the lovely people we met:

Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

World Body Painting Festival

Between the 17th & 19th July I was lucky enough to be in Seeboden, Austria for the World Body Painting Festival (http://www.bodypainting-festival.com/). It has been going now for over ten years and attracts body painting artists from all over the world, as well as photographers and suppliers. Thousands of spectators also come along to enjoy watching the artists work as well as the stage presentations, music and amazing firework display on the last night.

On Friday the weather was hot as we all worked under canvas on the first day of the brush and sponge competition. It was my first year there and it was an amazing experience - I learnt such a lot. I hadn't realised quite how many people utilised the option of having an "assistant" help them to create their body art, so working on my own I was really pleased to get 46th place.

The theme was "Poetry - the power of words". It’s based on the concept that the power of poetry is the emotional response and being set free into your imagination. There is a play on words with the tree on the back also being the poet – poet-tree.

My model was the very lovely and utterly talented Tina Hörmann from Austria.

We were also included on Bodypaint City TV's Friday highlights:

On Saturday I worked with the Snazaroo team. Snazaroo is a face & body paint manufacturer based in Minehead, UK (http://www.snazaroo.com/) and obviously the Cats Whiskers team use their face & body paint for all our work!!

The weather changed completely in the morning with a huge downpour of rain, so it was a slow start! Some of the competitions that were being held were delayed or did not go ahead quite as planned but after lunch the sun shone, the day warmed up and the festival ground sprung back into life. We had a busy afternoon on the Snazaroo stand and Luc Bec, a talented face painter and Snazaroo reseller from Belgium, and myself had fun face painting on the Snazaroo stand for the festival goers. I even managed to paint a pregnant tummy!! :)

I may not have gotten into the finals of the brush and sponge competition, but I had planned my design so on Sunday I body painted Tina again but this time in the Snazaroo stand as a demonstration. Sunday's theme was "Spirituality - beyond the visible eye". The idea behind it is the third eye and inner spirituality which are represented by the seven chakras. The path of spiritual enlightenment requires balance which is represented by the yin & yang. The white tiger is yin and the green dragon is yang in Chinese teachings.

When we went to the photo area to take photo's taken of the design, Tina was spotted by one of Gigi D'Agostino's stage crew (he is apparently a really huge DJ in Italy!?) and invited to dance on stage whilst he performed!! :)

It was a fantastic weekend where I met loads of old friends from the face & body art world and made some new ones; learnt loads and laughed even more. I'm looking forward to next year!!

Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/