a Naughty Body Paint Project
For years Naughty N’alwins has had some of the world’s best body painters creating temporary art on many of our sexy attendees (both women AND men). It adds to the sexy environment and helps make our theme nights really stand out. Well, last year, we came up with an idea to create a body paint art project that while temporary, we could create an image that would last beyond the event and stand on its own as a piece of art.
The Concept
The idea was inspired by a Pink Floyd art project, which was commissioned by EMI back in 1997 to advertise the release of the “back” catelogue of Pink Floyd albums (here is the “back” story behind that poster).
Legendary Body Paint Poster of Pink Floyd’s Album covers
It was an image that many of us grew up with and was many people’s first look at the art of body painting. Who knew that body painting would become so popular and end up on popular TV shows like Skin Wars.
We knew we wanted to something similar to this project but instead of promoting album covers, we wanted to promote the tenets or foundation that Naughty N’awlins is built on. How could we convey the sexual freedom that our event represents? We brainstormed what those tenets would be and our team came up with plenty: Sexual Freedom, Non-Monogamy, Polyamory, Clothing-Optional, Mardi Gras, Tantra, Bisexuality, BDSM, Education, Fetish, Music, Sharing
In the end, we decided to use the original “back” concept to inspire us to narrow down our pillars to six concepts that stood out to our attendees. Eventually, the ones we settled on were: Bisexuality • Tantra • Non-Monogamy • Nudism • Polyamory • BDSM.
We could have interchanged many of the main areas of focus for Naughty N’awlins, but we also had to come up with designs to represent those concepts and as the ideas came out of our brainstorming sessions, we settled on these six basic concepts that helped define our event.
We hired Pashur and Michael J Green to head up the team of artists and we started sketching what the backs would look like. Eventually, we settled on the basic ideas and then we brought in additional artists (names here) to help us bring this idea from concept to reality. Next, we sent out emails to our attendees to see who might be interested in being part of this project and we were surprised by how many submissions we got. Eventually, we narrowed the search down to the six women in the shots below and we put a plan in motion in order to be able to get everyone painted and in place for a photoshoot when no one would be at the pool.
The Painting
When the day finally arrived, the plan came together perfectly. Even though we were in the middle of an all-night-long, 5-day event, all of the models showed up on time and the body painters went to work at 6 am. We brought up trays of mimosas for the models and painters and everyone was in a great mood.
Body painting projects like this have a lot of moving pieces and we couldn’t be happier with both the artists and the models. Even the partners of the models showed up to provide moral support (and help drink a few mimosas!). It took several hours of preparation, painting and then the final detail work, but the end result was even better than we hoped. It was really coming together.
The only worry was that it was looking like rain. It was projected to start raining at anytime and we worried that we would not get the shot we wanted by the pool.
After everyone was painted, we headed up top the pool to get the final shot and luckily for us, the weather held out and the cloud coverage actually helped give us better light (and a break from the summer heat). The photo below was taken with a cameraphone, but the final photo was taken by Michael J Green, a professional photographer and one of the body painters on the team. He was able to retouch the photo and create the final image that we could use for a high-resolution poster that we could put in our Naughty Store.
Once we had the final image, we created two versions of the poster for our Naughty Store. One is just an image that anyone can hang up in their house, and most people will have no idea its meaning. They will most likely think it is just a photo of a bunch of women that were body painted, but the second image has Naughty N’awlins printed under the image along with the six tenets (Bisexuality, Tantra, Non-monogamy, Nudism, and BDSM) along with a list of the Artists (Pashur, Michael J Green, Angela Rene Roberts, Brittney Pelloquin and Meghan Davis).
Both are great posters; depending on how “out” you want to be, you can decide which version to hang in your home.
We also have T-Shirts available that are pretty cool in both men's and women’s cuts.
Poster Signing
We are very excited to announce that we will have a special poster signing on Saturday, after the parade and before the main parties kick off in the Astor’s main (Grand) ballroom from 8 - 9 pm. We will try to get all of the artists and the ladies who were painted on hand to sign these posters. We will have a limited edition of posters available for signatures, or you can bring your own T-shirt or posters from our store to have them signed.
We hope many of you will be inspired by this project to get a poster or T-shirt for yourself. We think it represents sexual freedom in a beautiful way that we hope reduces negative stigmas on different sexualities, nudism, and alternative relationship styles.