The Unusual Art Of This Body Artist Is Both Delightful And Grotesque

You certainly are no stranger to body art. You must’ve leered at completely nude people with only painted clothes hiding their modesty. Well, Jody Steel is not that sort of a body painter; she’s way beyond this. One look at her works and you’d know why.

Although Jody, who was raised in Florida, US, has always been passionate about sketching and painting since childhood, she chose her body as her canvas. She used to doodle on herself during her time in high school. Asked why she chose to paint on her body, Jody says, “I didn’t want to draw all over my notes, so the next available canvas was me!”

The idea of taking body painting seriously came to Jody during her first year at Emerson College in 2011. It was her teacher, Cynthia Miller, who noticed her sketching during class. She’d have discouraged her, but her work was so good that she just couldn’t say no. What’s more, her grades were good too. So, Miller made a deal with her to show her what she’d done at the end of each class. She also got Jody to illustrate her award-winning anthology, titled ‘Streaming into a Victorian Future’ in 2012.

However, Jody had gained popularity in the school itself, when she painted the sketch of ‘Breaking Bad’s’ Walter White on her thigh. This painting received over half a million views in Imgur, a photo-sharing website. This encouraged her to post her works online on different body parts. This was lapped up by CNN, Huffington Post, the Steve Harvey Show, and many others.

Jody, who had majored in film, thought of documenting her work and started recording her process. The end result was the delightful time-lapse videos of her works. On Facebook alone, she has over three million likes and followers. And her time-lapse tutorials have over 80,000 subscribers on YouTube.

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Jody Steel

Instagram

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