Jan 18, 2010 – EXCLUSIVE – New Orleans, USA – For centuries, brilliant artists have painted the naked female form in all its exquisite beauty. But those masterpieces have normally been on canvas Ð not on the human body itself. But look at the large photograph here and you’ll realise that is exactly what has happened. For this tiger, as our exclusive pictures show, is not all it seems… You are looking not into the eyes of the tiger but at the backs of two lithe models. And the jaw of the beautiful beast is actually the shapely posterior of a third. The unique Ð and utterly momentary Ð work of art was created by body-painter Craig Tracy at the request of a charity determined to save the subject of the picture. This year the United Nations has put the tiger at the top of its list of ‘most important’ endangered animals to be saved in 2010. And, among that species, the most perilously close to extinction is the beautiful South China Tiger.
The principal charity dedicated to their salvation, Save China’s Tigers, asked Craig to perform his magic to publicise their plight. He did so by inviting three models into his New Orleans studio and placing them in the precise positions that would allow him to create the shape of a tiger’s head. With his background already coloured in, the models were then painted in stages Ð as our picture sequence demonstrates. The resulting final image will help raise awareness and money for the charity to mark the February 14 start of Chinese New Year Ð which for 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. The charity’s founder Li Quan, a London-based fashion executive turned conservationist, said yesterday: ‘The South China Tiger is assumed to be extinct in the wild. The last credible sighting was 25 years ago.
(Credit Image: © Nigel Blundel/Exclusivepix/Exclusivepix) – BODY PAINTING: 3 MODELLE PER UNA TIGRE