Welcome to the "LepreCon 29" bodypainting webpage.  This bodypainting was part of LepreCon 29, Arizona's annual art-oriented science fiction and fantasy convention featuring the largest SF/F art show in the Southwest!  This year's event was again held at the Embassy Suites on May 16-18th and my live bodypainting demonstration took place on Saturday night starting at 11:00 p.m. 

The theme of this years event was Dark Fairy Tales.  I had toyed around with several ideas for my demo, but this was a fairly difficult theme to put a finger on.  My inspiration finally came from a very interesting turn of events initiated by one of the stormtroopers that I had met the previous year at LepreCon 28.  Stormtrooper Lance Dworshak is part of a Star Wars organization called 501st Dune Sea Garrison and he had recently called me about a new motion picture screenplay that he was involved with called The Villikon Chronicles.  He was helping to build armor for one of the characters in the story and he introduced me to the fold to bring some bodypainting art for this character.

The Villikon Chronicles was written by Bryan Kinnaird and there is an abundance of outstanding artwork by artist Roy Young that illustrates storyboards and a three-volume graphic novel of the story.  It is a science fiction endeavor that immediately wants to be compared to Star Wars, but it has incorporated elements that make it stand completely on it's own such as vampire-types known as porphyrians.  The queen of the porphyrians, Queen Sha'leste, is the character that I chose to use for my bodypainting demonstration.  Here is Roy Young's rendering of her  from the graphic novel:

I contacted Bryan to ask permission to use this character for the event and not only did he say yes, but he was also able to bring a fantastic backdrop, numerous copies of the the books and posters, and then stayed throughout the event to answer questions from the audience along with artist Roy Young about the Villikon Chronicles.

There was a model that had played another character in the story that expressed interest in being bodypainted as the Sha'leste character at LepreCon.  As fate would have it, she was unable to attend the show due to a scheduling conflict.  Several hours before "show time" I was very lucky to get in touch with model Kay Kochman who has worked with me on all four of the Queen card bodypaintings.  She was celebrating her anniversary with her husband at the Sanctuary Resort (which ironically is where the other model worked and which is also, ironically, a facility that I designed).  Anyway, she was willing to interrupt her evening to come model for the event and now her list of queen bodypaintings extends from the queen of spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs to include the queen of porphyrians!  I want to again thank you very much Kay for being a key part of my art portfolio.

For Kay's sake I used a paint that easily comes off with water called Mehron liquid make-up for the bluish-white skin effect.  This coat was applied with a Badger 155 airbrush.  The black outfit was Deviant liquid latex that was applied with a sponge brush.  The eyelids were painted red with a children's face painting kit.  This bodypainting took approximately 1.5 hours to complete and then the photoshoot took about another hour so we wrapped up around 2:30 in the morning.  There were about 45-50 convention attendees at the showcase at one time. 

The three part graphic novel of the Villikon Chronicles is available from Amazon.com by clicking on the images below.  I have read all three and highly recommend them not only for their thought provoking story line, but also for the rich colorful graphics.  One trip through the saga and I became a fan!

If you are interested in ordering a print from this photoshoot or would like additional information on bodypainting, please feel free to contact mark@futureclassx.com and visit my website at www.futureclassx.com .  Please browse through the additional images from the show below.  Thanks for visiting!

Click on the images below to enlarge.