Does anyone know some (ancient) cultures that use face designs (paint, tattoos, piercings) on females?
I need it for an art project I’m doing. We have to research a culture that uses costuming and face paints, ect. and then do a realism of ourselves (head shot) wearing the stuff. We’re only supposed to add color if it has a meaning to the culture.
I’ve been trying to find stuff about native americans, but all the cool designs are for guys.
Samoan women traditionally are tattooed, although not as heavily as the men:
http://www.oma-online.org/worn_with_pride_04.html
http://polynesia.com/samoa/samoan-tattoos.html
Women are also tattooed in the Marquesas Islands:
“The art of tattooing has always been deeply linked to the Marquesian culture and traditions. Men bodies could be entirely tattooed with geometrical signs, including the face, and even the tongue. On the other hand, women only got the shoulders, the inferior region of the back, the hands and the border of their lips tattooed. ”
http://www.thetahititraveler.com/general/arttattoo.asp
Tattooing seems to be a part of the cultures in various Polynesian countries, so you might want to look it up some more.
Henna is similar to tattoos, but it is not permanent. Henna is a part of several cultures in India, Pakistan, the Middle East, North Africa, and northeastern Africa. It’s generally used on the hands and feet and mostly done for weddings or religious holidays such as Eid:
http://eleganzic.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/henna_riffat.jpg
In Somalia, girls’ ears are often pierced while they are very young. My own ears were pierced when I was seven months old. Gold earrings are the jewellery Somalis prefer and it’s used for beauty purposes. We don’t use face paints but we do use kohl (eye liner). In other northeastern countries, like for some ethnic groups in Ethiopia, girls sometimes pierce their noses. This girl is Afar (in Ethiopia) and has both sides of her nose pierced and you can see that the lower tips of her nails are dyed with henna:
http://chaikhana.net/images/afar-gold2.jpg
There is an ethnic group in southern Sudan called the Dinka. “Some Dinka sections scarify the face to mark graduation into adulthood and age-group. In some, women of particular status have their faces scarified.” Here’s one such example:
http://thewe.cc/thewe_/images_5/_/bbc/dinka_woman.jpe
The Dinka also use face paint.
Here’s a blog with many pictures from various countries of the world showing different people’s traditional face or body painting:
http://bodyartdefinition.blogspot.com/2006_12_19_archive.html
This man, from Niger, is most interesting:
http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/223/1517/1600/261315/Niger-africa.jpg
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