Body Art - Tattoos

Body Art

Body art is very broad term which includes ear piercing to a funky tattoo, painting or you can say everything related to skin decoration. Today there is a craze among college students especially to get a funky tattoo done. Having a body art done is a means to express themselves and their individuality.

Besides piercing and tattooing body painting is growing in popularity as a body art form. Body art painting treats human body as a blank canvas, and beautiful crafty colorful pictures are drawn on it. Although this artistry may not be your drawing room's show case they are still splendid.

These days companies have employed a new marketing funda of using body painting as a form of advertising. Many advertisements showcase the models with company logos painted onto their bodies.

Be it a sports day at school or cricket match in the country or going in discs beautiful body art, or painting is apparent. Fans many times express their love and compassion for their favorite team by painting the team mascot or writing their favorite team's name.

Tattoo asthe popular body art

Tattoos are very old art, anciently practiced as marking to identify animals or some convicts and also as permanent ornaments to decorate the body. The word Tattoo is actually derived from a Tahitian word "Tatau." The regularly growing passion Tattoos differ in patterns between males and females. Where males prefer tribal, skull, scorpion patterns, females go for angel, sun, moon patterns.

Tattoos may be permanent or temporary. Heena or mehandi, sticker tattoo or that drawn from water colors is temporary tattoos. Permanent tattoos are much painful and costly too. Inspite of pain involved tattooing has been practiced by modern as well as tribes across the world. The procedure of making tattoos too sports a wide variety; in some cultures tattoos are formed from scaring and rubbing it with ashes or charring while pricking with thorns to insert dyes in others.

Uses of Tattoo

1. Decorative and spiritual uses of tattoos involve symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for bravery, mark of fertility, amulets and talismans for protection.
2. Now-a-days people choose to be tattooed for cosmetic and sentimental purposes. Extensive decorative tattooing is common for traditional freak shows and by performers who follow in their tradition.
3. Tattoos are a marking that gives an idea about status and rank of an individual.
4. The tattoos were carved out for identification of inmates by Nazis. Sometime a tattoo can be useful for forensic pathologists as they might help identify burned or mutilated bodies.
5. These days for the cosmetic purpose tattoos are marked as permanent eyebrows, lips liner or lipstick, eye liner and even moles.
6. A new application of tattoo is 'Medical tattoos.' Tattoos are used for in repeated radiotherapy and for breast reconstruction.

Method of Tattooing
Modern days tattoo parlors mushrooming in cities uses the electric tattoo machine which has an oscillating unit that has a mount of group of needles. These needles dipped in Azo- or Acri- dyes goes in and out of the skin around 80-150 times resulting into a gorgeous tattoo.