Artist Elevates Face Painting To A Whole New Level

A 46-year old artist from Three Oaks, Michigan has taken face painting to a whole new level - For the last 365 days, he has used his face as a canvas, to paint different designs that range from cartoon characters to his most favorite foods.

James Kuhn, who completed his year-long project on Friday, April 24th, said that the whole idea began as way to occupy himself on a winter day last March, when he was snowed in and had to miss work.

He considered cleaning his house, but instead decided to open his makeup box and play around with his body paints.

His posted his first 'self portrait' appropriately dubbed 'Cabin Fever' on photo-sharing site Flickr, received a few positive comments, and after - he was 'unstoppable'.

When he first started, he thought he would run out of ideas within a few days - but as days went by, he got even more inspired, and enjoyed it so much, that he could have spent hours on painting each day.

However, since he had to go to work for his real job each morning, he only had a few hours each evening, to create a self portrait, take a picture and video, and share it with his fans all over the world.

Kuhn, whose images are drawn from everyday life, loves to create illusions and play with people's minds. One of his most favorite portraits, was eating a hot dog, where he stuffed his cheeks with paper to create 'puffed cheeks' and then painted the rest. He also enjoyed painting his favorite childhood characters, Tigger, Piglet and Winnie-The-Pooh.

James enjoyed his 365-day painting project so much, that he intends to continue doing it - though not on a daily basis. One of the ideas he is considering, is to paint letters of the alphabet. The wacky artist has also just completed his first children's book, which will be illustrated - with face paintings of course!

Sources:sgblogs.com, telegraph.co.uk, pinewooddesign.co.uk