May 6th was the premiere of the movie Thor and being a huge Marvel Comics fan I attended the midnight showing with my kids. Loved it, by the way. Knowing that this movie would be coming out the same weekend as LepreCon 37 I decided to do a bodypainting relating to Thor. After doing a little research on-line I became intrigued with the idea of doing a painting of Thor's wife, Sif. There was a character in the Thor movie named Sif (played by Jaimie Alexander), but I wasn't trying to copy that character design and I instead came up with my own interpretation of what she might have looked like. One of Sif's characteristic features was her beautiful flowing golden locks of hair. My first choice of a model that I envisioned in this godess role was Jen Amber. I was thrilled when I found out that she would be in town and that she was available and interested in doing the project. Finding a beautiful canvas like Jen Amber can really take the bodypainting images to the next level and she once again rose to the occasion! I spent a little more time working on props for this project. My son Zane had a school project to make a mythological artifact and I encouraged him to pick Thor's hammer, Mjölnir. I helped him assemble it with wood materials from Home Depot and old leather belts. He got an a "A" on the project! Next I assembled the crown. The metalic portion of the crown was intended to be worn upside down from the way I assembled it which gave a nice nose guard to the piece. Next I took a feathered Mardi Gras mask to add on the wings before spraypainting them gold. The flats were assembled for this project and custom painted to give the feel of forest from Norse mythology and also a royal setting. The finishing touches to the costume were her black leather boots and the black and red cape. In some pictures I also introduced a decorative double pointed sword and the blue head of a frost giant. The painting itself was to look like a warrior's outfit with a decorative Celtic knot motif. The arms and legs gave a nod to the Thor outfit in the movie with the square scales. These were achieved by painting a base coat of black and then using a square foot of meshed floor tiles as a stencil to airbrush the gold pattern. I used Reel Creations paint for the red, silver, and gold portions of the painting and Mehron paints for the blacks. The painting took about 2 hours to complete, plus an hour of setup time for the photography and set design, and then the photoshoot took approximately 45 minutes to an hour. This is a long and strenuous gig for a model, but Jen Amber was a total pro and was enthusiastic throughout the whole process and she had had another modeling assignment earlier in the day. She's fantastic to work with! Here are a few progress shots that were taken by Steven Goldstein.
Here are two more shots that I took
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