Dear Cancer

Earlier in the year I went to meet a wonderful lady by the name of Anna Antell. We had been introduced through a friend on Twitter because Anna was looking for a body painter to offer their services for a project entitled "Dear Cancer".

I spent an amazing day meeting some wonderful women at a lovely farm house in Oxfordshire (it offers B&B too, I'll try and dig out the link!!). They were styled and pampered and ultimately revealed their Cancer scars to be captured on camera.

These images have now been shown along with other artwork, poetry and sculpture at an amazing exhibition in MalMaison, Oxford.

Anna has also been featured in the Daily Express and here's the link to the article which gives much more information about her journey to create the wonder that is "Dear Cancer" - http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/207957/The-art-of-dealing-with-cancer

All of this has been about raising awareness and ultimately money to support those suffering with Cancer and to work towards a cure.

For more information about Dear Cancer and the links to donate to the cause through Just Giving please check out the Facebook Fan Page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dear-Cancer/149331745098338?ref=ts&v=wall

Have a look through the photo album from the launch and you might be able to spot some of my art work! :o)

All the best,
Helen
www.catswhiskers.biz

UK Face & Body Art Convention 2010

Hello!

It's been a while and I appologise for my lack of posting. The Summer months are always are busiest and it gets a little crazy in the office here at Cats Whiskers!

Now we've almost recovered, I'll do my best to post about the fun we had during teh Summer months and get back to posting regularly about our current adventures.

This past weekend was the UK Face & Body Art Convention in Birmingham. I went up to paint for the Snazaroo team on the Saturday and had a fantastic time. Back in June I did a body painting shoot for them to create an advertsiting image and this design, painted on the stunningly beautiful Rowena Perry and photographed by Simon Webb at Blueskies photography, was used for the programme and on a sketch book & tin full of goodies given to every delegate at the convention. :o)

More soon.
Cheers,
Helen

Cats Whiskers Face Painting
www.catswhiskers.biz

Body Art at Hobbs Fashion Show 19th June

Cats Whiskers will be creating some of our stunning body painted clothing on two models for the Hobbs Fashion Show in Bristol at the Colston Hall on Saturday 19th June. This is billed as the largest independant Fashion / Dance & Music event in Europe and the show starts at 8:30pm. The event is organised by Doug Hobbs of Hobbs Hairdressing and all profits go to Meningitis UK.

For more details take a look at www.hobbs-style.co.uk ad for tickets contact the Box Office at the Colston Hall: www.colstonhall.org or 0117 922 3686.

See you there.

Helen

www.catswhiskers.biz

Body Art Competition

Imagine my surprise this morning to discover that a picture I'd submitted for the Snazaroo Body Off competition (http://www.snazaroo.us/queen/bodyoff.htm ) at the end of 2008 has been posted on the competition page for voting! :)

The image is of an eagle with the American flag:

What an excellent start to the week!

Helen

www.catswhiskers.biz

Silver Body Art

From http://picasaweb.google.com/CatsWhiskersFacePainting/HelenCatsWhiskers?feat=embedwebsite

Here are some pictures from a Silver Lady body painting that I did at the end of 2009.

The photographer was Rob Skilton & model was Abby.

Cheers

Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Body Painting images from the World Body Painting Championships, Seeboden 2009

The photography awards for the World Body Painting Championships held in Seeboden in July this year have recently been announced (http://193.171.119.147/us/wbpf/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=49942) and several of the photographers have used images of the body paintings that I created there! My thanks to my photogenic and utterly fabulous model - Tina Hörmann.
Photographer: Adam Jean-JacquesPhotographer: Alfonso

Photographer: Samo Trebizan

Photographer: Anthony Thomas

Photographer: Yan Lavallee

Helen

www.catswhiskers.biz

Body Painting & Get Technical in Illusion Magazine Issue 10

The eagerly anticipate issue 10 of Illusion magazine (www.illusionmagazine.co.uk) has finally arrived on my doorstep!

In this edition Snazaroo (www.snazaroo.com) have once again chosen one of my body paintings to advertise their wonderful brand of paint, which we at Cats Whiskers use for all our face and body painting work. The editing team have done an amazing job translating my technical page from the random scribbles I send them into a beautifully polished and professional piece of work. My thanks to them!!

Now to grab a cup of tea and sit back to read the rest of the magazine. :)

Helen
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/

Harley Quinn body art used for Snazaroo Advert.

Here's the latest body painting advert in Illusion Magazine for Snazaroo which is using my art work!! :)

Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Dragon Dance Video from the Face & Body Art International Convention (FABAIC) 2008

Nearly a year ago I travelled over to Florida to be an instructor at FABAIC and part of the amazing experience I had over there involved taking part in Bodies Alive! This was a performance involving lots of body painting, dance, culture and much more.

I wrote about this soon after I got home: http://helen-at-cats-whiskers.blogspot.com/2008/06/body-painting-for-bodies-alive-at.html

The performance was filmed but soon after the film became lost and we thought we would never see it - however Christopher Agostino, whose idea the show was, has tracked it down and it is now available to see!!!

I was involved in the Dragon Dance team and we had to go onstage during the dance and transform our "peacock" into a dragon. (I'm the one painting the orange model on the left!) Here's the link to the video of the Dragon Dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hua8L_tQoto

Some other clips from the show can be found here:

UV Action Painting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_WFUeJWMNk
Jinny's Singing Faces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm2UTHVmrCc
Metamorphosis Models:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxalpMqqMog

The singing faces were utterly fantastic and ridiculously funny. :)

I hope you enjoy.
Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Bristol City New Kit Article from BCFC web site

Here's the article with Edd body painted with the new kit from the BCFC web site - just for Sharon. ;)

Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

The new Bristol City football kit in body paint!

Yesterday Sharon and I body painted Bristol City Football Club fan, Edd Parsons, with the latest club strip for a photoshoot with Liam Fontaine. Edd was a great model and game for a laugh! I particularly like the picture of him stood in the stands cheering on his team!

Here's a link to the article on the Bristol City Football Club website: http://www.bcfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10327~1634137,00.html

And here's a link to the gallery of images showing the new kit and our bodypainted version:
http://www.bcfc.co.uk/page/Gallery/0,,10327~1634123,00.html

Helen
http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Body Painting - Harley Quinn

Back in March I went up to London to do some body painting for photographer David Kane (http://www.davidkane.co.uk/) with model Holly D. Holly has an amazing Joker tattoo on her arm and David had a cunning plan to body paint her as Harley Quinn - the Jokers girlfriend - and make her look as though she'd just been in a fight.

Here are a couple of the resulting pics. :)

Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Cover Artists!

OK, so it's been a while since I've blogged but it certainly isn't because there's been nothing to blog about! We've been really busy with work, exciting projects and taking orders. :)

I've also gotten quite obsessed with Twitter, so if you follow my feed (CatsWhiskersFP), you'll get a snap shot of the madness and mayhem that we exist in!!

One of the most recent events to get really excited about was that Sharon and I became cover artists!! We recently worked with Bristol City Football Club to body paint midfielder Marvin Elliott for his focus piece in their match programme and it was used as the cover image as well. :D
Here are some more pictures from the shoot:

As you can see it was a really fun shoot to do.

And here is the finished article: (click on the pics to make them big enough to read)

Enjoy! :)

Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Web article and pictures from the Evening Post

Here's the article from the Bristol City website about the Comic Relief body painting and the picture from the Bristol Evening Post. :)

Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Cats Whiskers paint Bristol City players for Comic Relief!

This afternoon Sharon and I met Adriano Basso and Ivan Sproule, football players for Bristol City, at the David Lloyd gym (http://www.davidlloyd.co.uk/home/clubs/bristol), Ashton Gate as part of a fund raising activity at the Gym for Comic Relief.

Adriano had his face painted with his famous saying "Always Believe" and the Red Nose designs whilst Ivan had his chest painted with a Red Nose version of the Bristol City Supporters club shield.

The full story and photos can be found on the Bristol City website: http://www.bcfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10327~1589803,00.html

:D
Helen
http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Cherry Blossom Boudoir Body Painting images

Cherry Blossom Boudoir photography launched in Bristol on 14th February. (http://www.cherryblossomboudoir.com/default.html)

Sharon and I joined Becki, Cherry Blossom's talented photographer and the lovely models Zoe and Justine for a Boudoir body painting photo shoot.

Here are two sample pictures from the shoot. Sharon painted a stunning red corset on Zoe and Justine and I tried to recreate a Joanne Gair image that we'd liked. (http://www.joannegair.com/body3.7.htm).

Helen
http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Snazaroo advert using our Body Painting!!

Snazaroo (http://www.snazaroo.com/), the face & body paint manufacturer based in Minehead, Somerset has used one of my body painting images for their advertising in the latest edition of Illusion Magazine (http://www.illusionmagazine.co.uk/1.html)!

I also have a face painting techniques article in the magazine.

Happy day!

Helen
http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Bodys Alive! Video

This blog all started when I returned from FABAIC, Orlando at the end of May last year and decided to share the experience I'd had. Whilst at the Face & Body Art International Convention I had taken part in a body painting show which was the brain child of Christopher Agostino - and it was fantastic!!

Unfortunately the video of the performance has yet to come to light, but this clip of people preparing back stage has been posted on YouTube. It takes me right back there with all the noise and chatter and absolutely staggering art being created.

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kymr_I77d2U

Hope you like it!

Helen
http://www.catswhiskers.biz/

Fairy Pregnant Tummy Painting

I was invited to a baby shower this evening to paint a pregant tummy for a lovely lady by the name of Sarah.

We'd discussed designs in advance and her request was for a fairy tale theme of a baby with small wings curled up on a toadstool and some ivy-type leaves framing the main art with some purple and white 'whimsical' flowers.

Here is how it turned out. Thank you to Sarah for being a fabulous model and to Zachary for being so active! LOL! :)

Helen

http://www.catswhiskers.biz/