This is a tattoo. Although clever, it is not what I mean!!
I'm not a big fan of tattoos, especially on women, but I do love me some body painting!! There is currently a TV series called "Skin Wars" where body artists paint directly on models, who are generally naked.
Look carefully at these three pictures.
There is a person standing in front of the shelves in each of them!!
The artists are assigned specific challenges.
They may be asked to "dress them":
Do an abstract painting:
Or turn them into something else entirely:
All photos above from "Skin Wars" (I think).
I've just discovered an even more amazing form of body painting, done by a woman who was born to Chinese parents on Japan. Her name is Hikaru Cho. This is what yahoo.com says about her:
She works on art
she says is short-lived but intended to reveal a new way to look at the human
form.
"As soon as I finish, the work
starts deteriorating as it begins to dry," said Cho as she painted a hatch
on a shaved head that reveals iron bars behind which a tortured figure
languishes, desperate to escape.
The intense
realism of the painting, part of Tokyo Designers' Week, would last only hours,
destined to be washed off as soon as the canvas took a shower.
"I think of
an illusion in three dimensions," she said. "I take in an element of
trickery to make things appear hollowed out or to seem as if something is
emerging."
The head painting
-- as much a performance as a picture -- is someone literally "imprisoned
by their thoughts", she said.
"This is
something totally impossible in real life. I want viewers of my art to question
what they usually think is normal," she said.
Her work, which
can take up to seven hours, has previously included a huge zipper on a woman's
back that is coming open to show the inner workings.
Cho's ultimate
ambition is to paint an entire -- and naked -- body.
"Seventy
percent of a human body is made of water, they say. I want to make that visible," she said.
Here are some examples of her work:

These women paint on themselves.
For you tattoo aficionados, some cartoons:
I just found this--it goes with my comment to Rick (below):
When I was in my 20's I had a rose tattooed on my breast; it's now long stemmed----fishducky
