World Body Painting Festival

Photo © Heinz-Peter Bader - Courtesy Daily News

I wasn't aware that a World Body Painting Festival even existed, but I should have. It is an annual body painting festival and competition held in Pörtschach, Austria, and attracts artists from 45 nations, and attracts more than 30,000 spectators. The event was held on July1-3, 2016.

It's a competition between artists (I suppose they're called 'body painters') who work on models for the festival's three days with a given theme. The categories are brush & sponge, airbrush and special effects for the World Champion Award.

I've done some digging, and I chose a couple of galleries that feature the wildest body painting examples; the Daily News has a gorgeous gallery with large images, while the UK's Daily Mail has a set of equally interesting images here.

I viewed many more of these galleries and noticed the number of photographers carrying the quasi-obligatory DSLRs with 70-200 lens were cheek-to-jowl surrounding the stage where the painted models strutted and showed off their body canvasses. I would imagine that getting as close as possible to the stage requires sharp elbows and a thick skin...these cluster-fucks must have a lot of shoving and pushing, and are not for the faint-hearted.

Perhaps an event on my bucket list?