Body as Canvas

Body is a canvas for many to express their feelings, traditions, aspirations and beliefs. Some people think of body art as enhancing their beauty. People have their body painted, tattooed or pierced and various reasons like political, spiritual and cultural are attributed to this body art.

Apart from body painting, tattooing and piercing the other forms of body art commonly practised are dyeing and scarification.

Body panting is just like painting on the canvas, covering the body with some paints or pictures or make up. Always it should be taken care that the paint used is non- toxic, non-allergenic and easily washable.

Dyeing is another body art in which different designs and patterns are fixed on the body. Henna is usually used for making dyes on the body.

Piercing is a common body art all round the world. Nose, ears, lips are some common places where the body is pierced for hanging ornaments.

Well, whatever body art is there, tattooing is the most common art on the body. A permanent art on the body, tattooing varied from one country to another and from one region to another. Tattoos are permanent marking made by inserting ink into the layers of skin. Various pictures are drawn using tattooing.

Scarification is not that popular now. Instead of using needles to colour the skin, the colour is placed on the wounds or cuts, which would leave a permanent mark once healed.