Tattoos, Body art, Body Painting-Self Expression-Friend or Foe

Now personally I don’t have a tattoo although I have been thinking of getting one. My wife has a small heart just above her right breast that you normally can’t see. I like it there and if you are wanting to get a tattoo, there are many things to consider.

First you need to be tattoo smart. By that I mean you need to do a little research on them. There are many resources across the internet that can give you ideas about placement, coloring, style, design, and pro’s and con’s. From personal observation, I have noticed that certain places on the body can add to your appearance and seductivity and other places can be distracting. Depending on whether you are in the spotlight or just behind the scenes, you need to know how a tattoo will affect your everyday activities.

Most of society has begun to accept tattooing and generally don’t make a big deal about them. I myself, think they add a certain flair to your personality. They are a way of expressing who you are and how you feel about yourself. Remember, they are a permanent part of your body afterwards. They can be very enticing or they can be ridiculous. Some people have made it their objective to completely cover their entire body with tattoos. I don’t really care for this type of practice but, if that is what you want to do this, then go for it.

When and if you decide to get a tattoo, by doing the research first you will be able to make a well informed decision as to where and how you want to display your new form of self expression. Whether they are in the form of flowers, butterflies, animals, and even people, they can add to your self worth. Many of us would like to express ourselves everyday but, we just don’t how. You can through the form of a tattoo.

If you decide to go ahead and purchase a tattoo, please remember that they are expensive to install and remove depending on the size and location. Although they can be removed, there is the possibility of some tissue damage and discoloration.

I am no expert on tattoos and if I was going get one I definitely would research the subject first.

Tattoos, Body art, Body Painting-Self Expression-Friend or Foe

Now personally I don’t have a tattoo although I have been thinking of getting one. My wife has a small heart just above her right breast that you normally can’t see. I like it there and if you are wanting to get a tattoo, there are many things to consider.

First you need to be tattoo smart. By that I mean you need to do a little research on them. There are many resources across the internet that can give you ideas about placement, coloring, style, design, and pro’s and con’s. From personal observation, I have noticed that certain places on the body can add to your appearance and seductivity and other places can be distracting. Depending on whether you are in the spotlight or just behind the scenes, you need to know how a tattoo will affect your everyday activities.

Most of society has begun to accept tattooing and generally don’t make a big deal about them. I myself, think they add a certain flair to your personality. They are a way of expressing who you are and how you feel about yourself. Remember, they are a permanent part of your body afterwards. They can be very enticing or they can be ridiculous. Some people have made it their objective to completely cover their entire body with tattoos. I don’t really care for this type of practice but, if that is what you want to do this, then go for it.

When and if you decide to get a tattoo, by doing the research first you will be able to make a well informed decision as to where and how you want to display your new form of self expression. Whether they are in the form of flowers, butterflies, animals, and even people, they can add to your self worth. Many of us would like to express ourselves everyday but, we just don’t how. You can through the form of a tattoo.

If you decide to go ahead and purchase a tattoo, please remember that they are expensive to install and remove depending on the size and location. Although they can be removed, there is the possibility of some tissue damage and discoloration.

I am no expert on tattoos and if I was going get one I definitely would research the subject first.

Body Painting Commission Photos and Original Watercolor Paintings for sale!

It proved to be a fairly mellow week with some much better behaved weather that did not leave my brain melted into a puddle between my feet.
On Tuesday Danny and I drove out to Scholl Oregon to meet a photographer and his pregnant model for a body painting commission.
The photographer was hoping for a somewhat "earth mama" vibed body painting since he intended to photograph the maternity shoot amongst Oregon's lush greenery.
While i worked Danny took some photos of the process:

As seen in the above photo i started the body painting by blocking out some color and then going into it to create detail and shape in order to create flowers.

The flowers were inspired by the big "dinner plate Dahlia" flowers.


The lotus was a fun addition with its roots delving into a very mysterious eye. I liked the back piece the best.
With this body painting i was trying to part ways a bit from the body painting style i have been using for my women's study body painting seires. I want to keep that look of mine soly under my name in hopes that my project will remain consistent and easily recognizable.
...Anyhow i am interested to see photos from the photographer and i will share a few with his permission on the blog when he does come out with them.

Just yesterday i decided to list more of my original watercolor paintings for sale in my etsy shop so i now pleased to announce that the following three have made it into the shop and are available for purchase:


Goddess In Full Bloom
9" x 12" watercolor painting on watercolor paper
by Chelsea Rose
Priced at $100
click here for the sale listing.


Evening Gown
9" x 12"
Original watercolor painting on watercolor paper
by Chelsea Rose
Priced at $100
Click here for the sale listing.

and also:

Sweet Water Gem
9" x 12"
original watercolor painting
by Chelsea Rose
Priced at $100
Click here for the sale listing.

....i will be listing 4 more watercolor paintings for sale in the etsy shop very soon!

Otherwise, summer continues to beat its drum and my morning glory flowers are blooming in a fever!


....and this pleases me :)

Danny got our basil clippings to begin rooting in some of my antique bottles:

...so as of yesterday they have been happily potted on the patio.
I love the way the basil smells in the morning and i am greatly anticipating some of danny's home made pesto made from our home grown plant!

And here is a look at a goofy pic i took of myself the other day when i was playing around with my locs:

I enjoyed this style because it reminded me of the hair of my current mermaid painting that i am working on:

see?
:P
I ordered some Henna dye for my dready tendrils just the other day so if the powder arrives today or tomorrow I may end up with "Irish red" locs for Monday. we shall see!
Otherwise, as far as this weekend goes i am pleased to say there are no "big plans." I hope to enjoy, relax and get a bunch of work done on my mermaid painting. wish me luck!

Best wishes and much love,
-Chelsea Rose

P.S.
I am happy to share that my body painting work has been featured in Eva Beyond Reason's blog. Click here to check it out!
Eva, thanks so much for your kindness and support- it means a lot!

Body Painting Commission Photos and Original Watercolor Paintings for sale!

It proved to be a fairly mellow week with some much better behaved weather that did not leave my brain melted into a puddle between my feet.
On Tuesday Danny and I drove out to Scholl Oregon to meet a photographer and his pregnant model for a body painting commission.
The photographer was hoping for a somewhat "earth mama" vibed body painting since he intended to photograph the maternity shoot amongst Oregon's lush greenery.
While i worked Danny took some photos of the process:

As seen in the above photo i started the body painting by blocking out some color and then going into it to create detail and shape in order to create flowers.

The flowers were inspired by the big "dinner plate Dahlia" flowers.


The lotus was a fun addition with its roots delving into a very mysterious eye. I liked the back piece the best.
With this body painting i was trying to part ways a bit from the body painting style i have been using for my women's study body painting seires. I want to keep that look of mine soly under my name in hopes that my project will remain consistent and easily recognizable.
...Anyhow i am interested to see photos from the photographer and i will share a few with his permission on the blog when he does come out with them.

Just yesterday i decided to list more of my original watercolor paintings for sale in my etsy shop so i now pleased to announce that the following three have made it into the shop and are available for purchase:


Goddess In Full Bloom
9" x 12" watercolor painting on watercolor paper
by Chelsea Rose
Priced at $100
click here for the sale listing.


Evening Gown
9" x 12"
Original watercolor painting on watercolor paper
by Chelsea Rose
Priced at $100
Click here for the sale listing.

and also:

Sweet Water Gem
9" x 12"
original watercolor painting
by Chelsea Rose
Priced at $100
Click here for the sale listing.

....i will be listing 4 more watercolor paintings for sale in the etsy shop very soon!

Otherwise, summer continues to beat its drum and my morning glory flowers are blooming in a fever!


....and this pleases me :)

Danny got our basil clippings to begin rooting in some of my antique bottles:

...so as of yesterday they have been happily potted on the patio.
I love the way the basil smells in the morning and i am greatly anticipating some of danny's home made pesto made from our home grown plant!

And here is a look at a goofy pic i took of myself the other day when i was playing around with my locs:

I enjoyed this style because it reminded me of the hair of my current mermaid painting that i am working on:

see?
:P
I ordered some Henna dye for my dready tendrils just the other day so if the powder arrives today or tomorrow I may end up with "Irish red" locs for Monday. we shall see!
Otherwise, as far as this weekend goes i am pleased to say there are no "big plans." I hope to enjoy, relax and get a bunch of work done on my mermaid painting. wish me luck!

Best wishes and much love,
-Chelsea Rose

P.S.
I am happy to share that my body painting work has been featured in Eva Beyond Reason's blog. Click here to check it out!
Eva, thanks so much for your kindness and support- it means a lot!

FaerieWorlds 2010, Body Painting Ian of Telesma

First of all...let it just be said that the sacred energies that be seem to truly work in mysterious ways. Thats how this past weekend seemed to go- unfolding itself into an unexpected, yet well defined path of righteous fun.

A week or so ago a friend mentioned the FaerieWorlds 2010 festival and whether or not i was planning on going. I had completely forgotten that the festival was going to take place so soon and so near( in Eugene Oregon) and upon discovering that it wasn't extremely expensive to attend it peeked my interest. What was more interesting was that Danny had come across an urgent message- one of the main bands- Telesma -was in need of carpool faeries. The lead singer and the drummer were to fly into PDX but had no way to get to the Eugene fairgrounds. Long story short we ended up carpooling to the festival with these two very fine folks. When the band saw my body painting photos they invited me to paint Ian the didgeridoo/percussionist from the band. Ian regularly goes on stage in bodypaint, and has been painted by amazing artist such as Kelli Bickman and Alex Grey!

We arrived at the fairgrounds just a couple hours before Telesma was to preform. The campground area was beautiful, dappled with nice shading trees with green forested hills in the distance:

I had painted a third eye + filigree on myself, and then a third eye on Danny before we made our way into FaerieWorlds festival. So glad we had this picture snapped- we have so few together and this one came out nice!

We had agreed to meet Ian backstage behind the main stage so that we could get the body painting finished in time for sound checks and setup. so we hurried across the camp grounds.

( all the following photos in this post were taken by Danny)
At the back of the stage was this HUGE tepee that was setup as the lounge area and thats where we worked. Ian had me use the paint he normally wears which was actually createx airbrush paint. I guess its the only stuff he has found that will actually hold up to all the sweat and movement he does during shows. He had me help paint a white basecoat. Once that was in place i was able to start with my fun. As always i began by painting a third eye on the forehead...then worked my way out from there.

I only had about 30 minutes to do the body painting so i was painting in a frenzy but i had some crazy-wonderful live music to listen to as i painted because the Gypsy Nomads were onstage before Telesma. They had a very interesting sound- kinda punk fuses with celtic jig jive/ flesh eating mermaid siren singing. i loved it and it was the perfect " painting really really fast" music.

As i was painting Ian i realized that he is actually the first man i have done a body painting on. I have been working strictly with women for my body painting series up until now. Generally i view the female form as being a much more interesting canvas with lots of curves and shapes then the male physical form. But i was actually pleasantly surprised to find Ian was a wonderful canvas full of fun shapes to work with to highlight/define with my line work.


So here he is all finished!


Danny snapped these right before Ian ran onstage to join the setup.


He looked magnificent up there with his crazy music devices!

Telesma is more then a band, they are an EXPERINCE!

taken from their bio: "The Telesma experience is an ecstatic trans-cultural phenomenon with a highly infectious and danceable beat. Exploding on the Baltimore music scene in 2002, it soon developed a loyal local fan base and then shook the underground festival scene. Alex Grey, the noted visionary artist, hailed Telesma as “shamanic… with a sense of an underlying universal
wisdom…a rare combination in a rock/techno band.”
Telesma’s blurs the line between performer and audience, attracting the most
creative VJs, dancers, visual artists and body artists to its shows. Every Telesma show is a vortex of creativity; a celebration of body, mind and spirit."

.......and they rocked me till i almost dropped( realizing that dancing in the heat of summer with a corset on can be a rather intense experience in its self!)

can you spot me and my dancin feet?

The rest of the day i had off to wonder the festivities. This festival had wonderful food so i munched- yes i did( handmade veggie tamales for lunch and veggie/grilled tofu styled pad Thai for din din.) We also strode around checking out the vendors. i was very surprised to see not very many artists booths. Instead there seemed to be a lot of leather mask makers, faery inspired clothing and so on. I did stop and talk to a few of the artists whom all said that it had been a rather slow year at the festival- many of them were very glad that they had decided to split booth fees with friends. They said that the booth fees had gone up since last year yet attendance was a little lacking. Some theories to that were that there was to many fried and crispy faeries last year since it was 104 for two of main days. Perhaps the heat scared some folks? that or the economy is truly getin to be a downer? Still...i am glad we went to check out the fair and scope the opportunities present. I had initially thought to do a full art booth next year but now i am thinking it might work better for me to just set up a lil table + umbrella and offer my body painting servies. So i have some research to do...to see if and how i might swing that for next year.

..'fraid thats all the news i have got for now. more coming soon including some vending and art opening opportunities in vancouver with the Guerilla Gallery.
Best wishes and much love to all,
-Chelsea Rose

July Last Thursday Artwalk on Alberta Street + new corset

So its Friday morning and i am having a hard time keeping my eyes open and my legs and arms feel as if they were made of lead but emotionally i feel elevated and inspired- these are the true sings of a art walk that went well!

Yesterday was Last Thursday Art walk on Alberta St ( a free art vending opportunity that occurs monthly in Portland Oregon.)
Unfortunately this was the first one of these i was able to attend so far this year because previous months it was either raining or i was out of town. So, i decided i was going to go this month and go enforce, thus i took the day off from work so that we could arrive
super early ( around 12:00pm) to stake out a good spot.

This is a photo Danny took after i had finished getting ready by painting my face for the art walk.
It was a super bright day so we were very lucky to have grabbed a spot with ample shade and trees. Still...the brightness made it hard to snap photos of our booth setup during the day but Danny managed to grab some of my body painting exploits:


I painted several lil girls faces + a few young adult faces...but when i asked one person if i could paint their face they turned around and asked " can i paint you!?"
Of course i said yes! they painted a small vine starting from my numb up a lil past my hand that ended in a heart. It was a silly/fun/unexpected treasure.
As the day crept into night danny was able to get a shot of our booth setup:

This photo was taken at a strange angle because what you dont see is the massive wall of moving people walking down the street in front of the booth. The turnout for this was just insane. After 8:00pm it was almost impossible to step out of the booth because the "river of flesh" was roaring!
We were setup facing the street with two tables on parallel sides .
One table with my my art:

the other table with Danny's art:

We used to always set up our artwork together but found that customers got confused as to "who's artwork was who's" which seemed to bother them a bit. Thus, we have found that now this separation seems to streamline customers experience making it less "modge podged" and more effective.
We did also have Danny's stencil records and a few silkscreen shirts on display laying on a sheet on the sidewalk:

We had a lot of folks stop and hover over the records- seems a particular point of interest to many.
We did well in sales this time which is always encouraging. We sold two of my pen and ink on Masonite board illustrations, a few art prints, a couple tie dye, and several face/body paintings.
Also managed to luck out and have a bunch of familiar faces pop up out of the blue so there was lots of hugs and catching ups to do. Met a few new friends as well.
And, as allways...its left me really looking forward to the next art walk on Alberta!
If you are interested in seeing some wonderful documentive photos of the this months artwalk check out the amazing Anni Becker's photographs here- bosting photos of all the crazy splendors of the day such as fire dancers, roaming musicans, dance pits, free hugs, crazy costumes, cute puppies, cops, artwork and artists , jugglers and much much more!!!

In other news, my new corsets arrived in the mail this week!
They were made by Danny's talented lil sis seamstress extraordinaire:

I am in love with it! I had picked out the fabric and sent it over awhile ago so i was delighted to have it in time to wear to the art walk last night.

Tomorrow i am going to the FaerieWorlds summer celebration festival to check it out for the first time. I am mainly going to enjoy myself but partly going to scope out the art vendors to see if perhaps i should hold a booth of my own at the fair for next year. we shall see! Also very excited that i get to do some body painting while i am there: will be painting the Didgeridoo Man in the band Telesma for their musicale prefromance at the festival! Pictures from this outing will most probably be posted via blog update on Monday.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend filled with joy, relaxation and creation.

Peace n Love,
-Chelsea Rose

July Last Thursday Artwalk on Alberta Street + new corset

So its Friday morning and i am having a hard time keeping my eyes open and my legs and arms feel as if they were made of lead but emotionally i feel elevated and inspired- these are the true sings of a art walk that went well!

Yesterday was Last Thursday Art walk on Alberta St ( a free art vending opportunity that occurs monthly in Portland Oregon.)
Unfortunately this was the first one of these i was able to attend so far this year because previous months it was either raining or i was out of town. So, i decided i was going to go this month and go enforce, thus i took the day off from work so that we could arrive
super early ( around 12:00pm) to stake out a good spot.

This is a photo Danny took after i had finished getting ready by painting my face for the art walk.
It was a super bright day so we were very lucky to have grabbed a spot with ample shade and trees. Still...the brightness made it hard to snap photos of our booth setup during the day but Danny managed to grab some of my body painting exploits:


I painted several lil girls faces + a few young adult faces...but when i asked one person if i could paint their face they turned around and asked " can i paint you!?"
Of course i said yes! they painted a small vine starting from my numb up a lil past my hand that ended in a heart. It was a silly/fun/unexpected treasure.
As the day crept into night danny was able to get a shot of our booth setup:

This photo was taken at a strange angle because what you dont see is the massive wall of moving people walking down the street in front of the booth. The turnout for this was just insane. After 8:00pm it was almost impossible to step out of the booth because the "river of flesh" was roaring!
We were setup facing the street with two tables on parallel sides .
One table with my my art:

the other table with Danny's art:

We used to always set up our artwork together but found that customers got confused as to "who's artwork was who's" which seemed to bother them a bit. Thus, we have found that now this separation seems to streamline customers experience making it less "modge podged" and more effective.
We did also have Danny's stencil records and a few silkscreen shirts on display laying on a sheet on the sidewalk:

We had a lot of folks stop and hover over the records- seems a particular point of interest to many.
We did well in sales this time which is always encouraging. We sold two of my pen and ink on Masonite board illustrations, a few art prints, a couple tie dye, and several face/body paintings.
Also managed to luck out and have a bunch of familiar faces pop up out of the blue so there was lots of hugs and catching ups to do. Met a few new friends as well.
And, as allways...its left me really looking forward to the next art walk on Alberta!
If you are interested in seeing some wonderful documentive photos of the this months artwalk check out the amazing Anni Becker's photographs here- bosting photos of all the crazy splendors of the day such as fire dancers, roaming musicans, dance pits, free hugs, crazy costumes, cute puppies, cops, artwork and artists , jugglers and much much more!!!

In other news, my new corsets arrived in the mail this week!
They were made by Danny's talented lil sis seamstress extraordinaire:

I am in love with it! I had picked out the fabric and sent it over awhile ago so i was delighted to have it in time to wear to the art walk last night.

Tomorrow i am going to the FaerieWorlds summer celebration festival to check it out for the first time. I am mainly going to enjoy myself but partly going to scope out the art vendors to see if perhaps i should hold a booth of my own at the fair for next year. we shall see! Also very excited that i get to do some body painting while i am there: will be painting the Didgeridoo Man in the band Telesma for their musicale prefromance at the festival! Pictures from this outing will most probably be posted via blog update on Monday.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend filled with joy, relaxation and creation.

Peace n Love,
-Chelsea Rose