Birgit Mertl: “You need to create your own style”

The article was first published in Makeup&YOU Professional magazine.

How did your acquaintance with the world of beauty begin? Twenty years ago I started working as a designer and connected my life with the world of fashion. I am a certified specialist in creating women's costumes and stage costumes for the theater. I have been a good drawer all my life. A good friend of mine started doing body art two years before I got into it. Almost no one did this then. Watching him, I just fell in love with body art. It all started when I went to a body art competition. At that time, I didn’t even know how to combine colors or what brushes to use. There were three rounds in the competition. My first image was terrible and downright bad, while creating the second it became clear to me how it all works, how to combine colors correctly, and so on. I won with the third one. After this victory, I became even more passionate about body art and went to the “European Body Art Festival,” now called the “World Body Art Festival.” It is hosted by Alex Barendregt, and this year the festival will celebrate its twentieth anniversary. And then it was the second festival, and I was one of the very first who started painting there. In total there were about ten masters and hundreds of spectators. And now about four hundred masters from around the world usually take part in this festival, and thousands of people come as visitors. I showed good results there from the very beginning - I was always in the top five and became world champion three times. It's no secret: in order to do your job well, you need to train a lot, have high-quality paints and all the numerous tools that cannot be cheap. Tell me, how financially demanding is the field of body art, and how long does it take for these investments to pay off? Now, twenty years later, I have no problem with this, thanks to my high status in the world of body art. There are many companies that provide me with the best materials in the world for me to test and work on. For example, Swarovski gives me stones.

Photo: Inge Prader

A person, seeing a beautiful picture in a magazine, decides: “Cool, I want to draw!” At this moment, he cannot even imagine how much time and money it takes, how many pitfalls there are. How can you get excited about body art and not be disappointed later? What difficulties should a beginning master be prepared for? When I first started, I had to spend a lot of money on all kinds of equipment, airbrush and paint. Although these are expenses, they are not always very large. Basically, if you love what you do, if you really like it, if you are a creative person and are completely imbued with the process, I don’t think you can leave body art because of money. But it’s not enough to just want to do it. You also need to be a good person and psychologist, because you work with people, and in general this process is very intimate. Beginners should definitely attend workshops, learn a lot of information in order to know what materials to use, how to mix paints, which colors can be placed next to each other and which ones cannot. Some people are not even aware that there are paints for body art, and they paint on the body with acrylic. I still continue to study all the time. It’s not enough to just take an airbrush, make one stroke and think that you already know how to draw. No, you need to constantly improve yourself. You said that you can’t paint with acrylic, because there are special paints. What would you highlight as the main taboos - what should not be done in body art, but novice artists are guilty of this? Be sure to use glue for the body and for the skin. Under no circumstances should it be, for example, Moment glue or Superglue. In body art, it is very important that the model feels good about herself. You need to make sure she eats, drinks and goes to the toilet throughout the work. Very often, models starve while working in order to look thin on stage, and do not drink so as not to go to the toilet, because it is inconvenient with body art. After standing in place for five or more hours, they may simply lose consciousness. Also, you should not use heavy headdresses and body elements, as models have to stand in them for several hours. It is imperative to use props made of lightweight materials. None of the jewelry should be prickly, so as not to scratch the skin. It is very important to take a good photographer with you. The work will eventually have to be washed away, so a good portfolio requires good photography. What qualities should a body art model have? Your colleagues told you that it’s better to draw on fuller girls, and for some specific jobs you generally need girls of larger sizes. And, perhaps, a person must be psychologically strong in order to stand without moving for ten hours? It is very important for me that the model is a good and kind person, because she must show my work correctly. It is important that she is beautiful both inside and out. I choose models that are not very thin and not very plump, that is, the middle option. It is not very good when you have large breasts, because the shape of the design may be destroyed.

Photo: Mathias Kniepeiss

Every creative person, be it a master of body art, makeup artist, musician, actor, writer, has his own specific creative preferences - genre or style. What preferences do you have? I really love creating not just body art, but a whole picture that includes costumes and jewelry. So that it is a whole story, and not just a drawing on the body. I don't like to use too many different colors, I always try to be elegant in my work. What are your favorite colors, warm or cool? It does not matter. What inspires you? There are people who copy the work of others, I think this is wrong. You need to create your own style. Traveling inspires me; in all places I always visit fabric stores. I can see the fabric, and at that very second an idea may come to me. I also like to go to museums and look at old paintings by famous artists, which also often serve as a source of inspiration for me. Body art is a relatively new field in Ukraine. When in Europe it was already at a certain level of its development, in our country it was just emerging. What would you say about the level of Ukrainian masters? How would you rate them? I am not aware of Ukrainian works, but I know a lot of Russian artists, and they are very strong in their field. Perhaps I saw something from the works of Ukrainian artists, but I did not know what origin the author was.