As I have decided to base my project on body modification but looking further into it’s history, dating back to tribes many centuries ago. I decided the best place to start was to look at the people of that time who have inspired me to look into the theme. It is clear to see that the influence of these tribal members many years ago and those who are yet to be discovered hiding within our tropical forests, have influenced the modern culture of today with their body modification but the difference of how these drawings, tattoos, scarification, body painting, amongst other things have develop to what they are today.
My initial idea was inspired by the african tribes of Surma and Mursi. As I looked into ‘Natural fashion, Tribal decoration from Africa’ A book by Hans Silvester, it gave me the idea to base my project upon the idea of creating a fantasy characters.
‘As a celebration of themselves and of their stunning environment, this is truly an African fashion parade like no other’ – Daily Mail.
The book documents the decoration from the African tribes. A brief summery of the book;
The lower valley of the Omo, at the borders of Ethopia, Kenya and Sudan, remains one of the wildest places in Africa. Over the course of numerous voyages to this forgotten land. Hans Silvester acme fascinated by the beauty of the Surma and Mursi tribes, who share a fast for body panting and extravagant decorations borrowed from nature.
In this region of East Africa, the rivers that run through the dry savannahs are home to abundant flowers, papyrus and wild fruit tress, and this luxuriance becomes and invitation to creativity and spectacle. Within hands reach, a multitude of plants inspire fanciful and ephemeral self- decoration, and the Omo tribes react spontaneously: A leaf, root, seed pod or flower is quickly transformed into an accessory. As in the West one might don a hat, people create caps from tufts of grass, As one would knot a tie or scarf, they ornament themselves with bananas leaves or a stem laden with flowers. These decorations are embellished with butterfly wings, buffalo horns, boards teeth, colourful feathers and the like, and are further enhanced by body painting with pigments made from powdered stone, plants, berries and river mud.
Silvester, H.W. (2009) Natural fashion : tribal decoration from Africa. London ; New York: Thames & Hudson.
To start the project I wanted to look into every aspect of a tribal family that had been recorded and gather as much information as I could to develop a great deal of background research into the subject.
Tribe
A tribe is known and viewed as a ‘social’ group existing before the development of modern culture. Living within their own in a secluded area, wether it being in Africa, up in the mountains of North America or hidden deep within a jungle.
A tribe possesses certain qualities and characteristics that make it a unique cultural, social, and political entity. There are many different tribes across the continent, with their culture varying from tribe to tribe.
Silvester, H.W. (2009) Natural fashion : tribal decoration from Africa. London ; New York: Thames & Hudson.
Once I had decided upon the idea of creating a tribal body paint, I had to dig deeper and develop upon what I wanted to create. I found that Pintrest is a great way to research and find images to help forward my ideas, and designs. I found a number of images that inspire my ideas within my project. From these images, I want to take a combination of each photo and my initial ideas to create a simple but beautiful fantasy body paint representing a tribal member.
tribal on Pinterest. 2014. tribal on Pinterest. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.pinterest.com/xcatrinxjonesx/tribal/. [Accessed 18 October 2014].
After further research on pinterest i cam across a few body paints that i really liked, and would love to further develop and put my own twist on them for this project. As you can see a lot of these images have the idea of adding a lot of colour and mixing all the elements of culture into one big body paint. In which is similar to what i would like to do for mine. By bringing all the work i had done over the summer holiday as a body painter into this project i think i could come up with a really cool and interesting body paint.
Below are some of the photos taken from my work over the summer, i would really like to incorporate some of the aspects of these body paints into my project and link them all into one big body paint.
Im really interested by this body paint, as the colours are very eye catching and all the elements with the paint works well together it captures everything. Its almost like the painting is trying to tell a story which i really like. I like the use of symbols, markings and the animals. Also the black background to the image looks really good as this shows off every detail better in my opinion. I need to consider using a black background for my body paint as they will have the use of similar colours.
tribal on Pinterest | 272 Pins. 2015. tribal on Pinterest | 272 Pins. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.pinterest.com/xcatrinxjonesx/tribal/. [Accessed 07 January 2015].
Specialist practice 