I’m lying on my back on the floor, totally naked, and a man, dressed only in his underpants, is crouching over me, paintbrush in hand.

He is Rick Mills, 32, an IT consultant from Shrewsbury, and he has been painting a dragon design on my body for the past three hours. He started off wearing a feminine beautician’s outfit but, as the room became hotter and the tension increased, he gradually stripped off and now he’s down to his pants.

In the first hour he turned my stomach into a dark red mouth with bright white fangs, and my breasts into terrifying eyes, my nipples the black pupils. He’s now working on my legs, painting them with scales in metallic orange, purple and yellow. “Is he turning you into a fish?” asks someone who has come by to gawp, looking at my legs being transformed into something that is, admittedly, more mermaid than mythical beast. But there’s only one response a dragon can make to such a comment. I push out my tummy so the mouth grows and let it come: “Rooooaaaaaaaaar!”

Mills’s hobby is body painting and I have agreed to be his model for a competition run by Prested Hall, a pretty country hotel and sports club, near Kelvedon in Essex. It is more commonly used for weddings but also hosts a naturist swimming club, the members of which will be judging me, or rather Mills, later.

Anyone who fancies a go can sign up to paint a person and the body painter voted the best over the course of a year will be invited back to compete in a final for a prize of £680. The competition was set up by Mike Carter, the hotel’s owner, to add some variety to the naturist swimming events. For ten months, body painters are invited to come along with their models and show what they can do. Mills and I are only the third pair to enter, but there are expected to be many more by the final in November.

Although there are frequent competitions on the professional bodypainting circuit, at events such as the World Bodypainting Festival at Seeboden, in Austria, competitions that are open to amateurs in the UK are few and far between. Mills is keen to win the Prested Hall contest and I’ve agreed to help him.

A writer by profession, I first heard about Mills while researching an article on modelling for artists. On a website for artists’ models I saw a small advert asking for bodypainting models. It caught my interest. If a massage for an hour feels good, I thought, how good will being painted with a brush for several hours feel. Having read lots in my research about artists wanting models of all sizes, I was also curious to see what could be done to my body, and how, in my late twenties, as a size 18, I would feel about being naked.

My willingness to be painted was, in part, an attempt to show that being a larger size, while not necessarily better for your health, can also be beautiful. To make a lofty claim for such a surreal event, being bodypainted was my attempt to follow in the traditions of Rubens and Titian and say no to the size 0 model. In fact, my dragon would eat, probably quite literally, the size 0 models for breakfast.

Mills actually prefers to paint on larger-size models. “You have much more canvas to play with and when the curves of the body move the picture does too,” he says. Although I’m nervous about being naked in front of strangers, never even having skinny-dipped on a deserted beach before, after a couple of minutes I stop feeling self-conscious, particularly as I feel I am being looked at only in terms of where to put the paint, not in any other way.

The rules of the competition give Mills five hours to complete his painting. He has, however, mistimed his vision slightly. While my front is completed to his satisfaction, he doesn’t have enough time to do much more to my back than cover it with a lot of green and black paint and to draw what is meant to be a butterfly-winged dragon, covered with glitter. However, when I twist around to see his creation in the mirror I discover that my back image resembles something like the Incredible Hulk, though without the charm and good looks of Eric Bana.

I could have insisted on a repaint but by this time I have been in an extremely humid room for nearly five hours and, as I stand up for Mills to paint a buttock, I wobble and nearly faint. Perhaps it was the soporific effect of constantly being touched with a paintbrush, which is really rather pleasant. I have to insist that the session is over, 20 minutes early, and I leave the room for some air, with Mills following in my wake valiantly trying to jazz up the green arms and legs with silver Chinese-style tattoos.

Mills, who has painted more than 50 models, first experienced body painting in 2000 when he read about the Seeboden festival. Curiosity piqued, he booked a ticket, liked what he saw, and thus began his unusual hobby. In fact, he was wearing body paint, a devil design, when he met his wife, Sonia, at a party after an arts festival in Walsall, near Birmingham.

The art has become more popular in recent years. Probably the most famous body to be painted is the actress Demi Moore, who appeared naked but painted with a realistic suit on the August 1992 cover of Vanity Fair. This was painted by Joanne Gair, a name that draws gasps of admiration from Mills. Since then a series of advertising campaigns have ensured that it remains in the public eye, with ads such as the one for Natrel Plus deodorant, which showed models painted to look like trees.

But whereas Demi Moore in her suit may have been able to walk down the street without anyone noticing that her clothes were not made of fabric, it is doubtful that my dragon design would convince anyone that I was in a skin-tight jumpsuit. Nevertheless, after just a few minutes, I stop feeling concerned about my nudity. Although I have had to remove my body hair for the experience, it is clear that people watching the painting are more interested in the emerging picture.

And so I gradually start to feel like a work of art. Not Rubens as I had hoped, not even one of the graceful but wobbly paintings by Lucian Freud. More like the tiger stalking through the forest in Henri Rousseau’s Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) that hangs in the National Gallery. And just as Rousseau had never seen a tiger, and his painting looks somewhat odd, Mills has, I expect, never seen a dragon. Despite this, the effect is pretty dramatic.

After being judged by the naturists, the results of which are kept secret, I kept the paint on for about half an hour. I was the only painted body on display that night and although I should perhaps have felt self-conscious being stared at by naked people, I was more covered than they were. In fact, I felt liberated.

Though I don’t feel the need to be painted again, it definitely gave me a new confidence. Walking from the shower to the communal changing room I didn’t cover myself with a towel, I just opened my mouth, and went “Rooooaaaaaaaaar!”

The illustrated woman

Dr Michael Atkinson, a Loughborough University sociologist and the author of Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art (University of Toronto Press), is proud of his two “sleeves” (arms that are completely covered in tattoos). He explains the ancient human urge to decorate our naked skin.

Sense of identity

“Although some people dismiss body painting or tattooing as a form of rebellion, body painting has been a part of our culture for about 10,000 years. It emerged when early humans started to assemble into groups. One of the main reasons for body painting was to identify ourselves as belonging to a certain community and so body painting varied from tribe to tribe. It was also used as an indicator of status. It was, and still is, done as a cultural rites of passage, with the body painted as a sign that someone has passed through a stage.”

Sisters are doing it to themselves

“Most of the women across the world, and quite a few men, partake in the daily ritual of adorning their face with paint, and it has spawned a multi-billion pound industry. Make-up has become an accepted part of society but few people stop and ask why we do it. Basically, we colour our faces to attract a mate and some anthropologists have likened this to the behaviour of some birds, which fluff up their feathers to draw attention to their body during the mating season. Also, putting on slap is another way for women to include themselves in a group. By making themselves up they are saying: ‘I am part of this community’.”

Gesture of defiance

“Painting a naked body, especially one that is a size 18, is a gesture of defiance against a culture that narrowly defines what type of figure is attractive, and where overweight bodies are talked about as a problem. I see it as part of the burgeoning size-acceptance movement.”

Tattoo me too

“Women are into tattoos. In America, three times as many women as men choose to get a tattoo. I see this as an indication that women are fighting male domination, saying that they can do exactly what they want with their bodies. However, many women also make sure that the tattoos are in easily concealable places.” Interviewed by Kate Wighton

Fancy a go?

If you want to try body painting at home, use a water-based make-up paint such as Snazaroo or Grimas, available from any fancy dress or party shop.

Normal paintbrushes and make-up sponges can be used. You will probably need a thin brush for detail, some medium-sized brushes for larger parts and a sponge for base colours.

For a first attempt try painting on a dark base colour and then going over the top with strokes of another colour. So a tiger or zebra design might be good to try. People with sensitive skin should do a patch test in advance to check that they don’t react badly to the paint.

If you are interested in being painted at Prested Hall, visit www.prested.com

For Rick Mills’s bodypainting website, with links to other UK and international sites, visit www.bodypainting.co.uk

For details of the World Bodypainting Festival, visit www.bodypainting-festival.com

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