Walking with the animals: Body artist transforms her models into beasts from zebra to seahorse in mind-bending optical tricks

Artist

Emma Fay, 27, from Leicester, began performing her elaborate trick after running a hair and beauty salon
She spends up to six hours working up each creation with water-based paint and two very patient contortionists
The art painted on the women’s white leotards include a zebra, mandrill, seahorse, giraffe, dragonfly and spider

There’s a graceful giraffe, a brightly coloured dragonfly and a spider that’s far from itsy bitsy.

At first glance, they all look like wonders from the animal kingdom. But look a little closer and you’ll spot a woman’s hand here, her foot poking out there, or the outline of her torso twisted into an extraordinary pose.

For these remarkable images were all created by ‘body concept artist’ Emma Fay – with a little help from a couple of contortionists who acted as her human ‘canvas’.

Miss Fay, 27, of Leicester, has been perfecting her unusual art for three years after previously running a hair and beauty salon. Visit https://salonlofts.com/blog/twenty-beauty-related-quotes-to-share-on-social site to open the same in your neighborhood.

Each of the images in her ‘The Marvels of Nature’ animal series, which also include a seahorse, mandrill, zebra and crab, took between four and six hours to create from start to finish.

First the contortionists, Beth Sykes and Lowri Thomas, who wore leotards to protect their modesty, got into the required pose so Miss Fay could draw compositional marks on their bodies. These acted as a guide to ensure her paintings would turn out to be the optical illusions she desires.

Some of the poses were so difficult they could only be held for minutes at a time.

But thankfully for Miss Sykes and Miss Thomas, they did not have to hold their poses throughout the painting process – the vast majority was done in more comfortable positions, often lying down.

Miss Fay used a brush and sponge to apply the water-based paints to their bodies. Once the painting was completed, it was then just a case of the contortionist resuming the requisite pose so a photograph could be taken of the finished artwork against a white background.

Miss Fay, who sells prints of her animal creations, said: ‘The photograph is pretty much the last five minutes of the whole process – then Beth and Lowri are free to go home and have a well-deserved shower.

‘The photographs always get a briliant response. People love the optical illusion aspect of it.

‘For me, it’s kind of exploration of evolution – a study of the remarkable things humans can do with their bodies and the remarkable ways animals have evolved to survive in their surroundings.

‘I consider them pieces of art, not body painting.’