Amazing Body Art

The paintings which are full of life: Incredible body art transforms people into living creatures and moving landscapes

• German artist Gesine Marwedel, 25, creates amazing lifelike paintings of animals and scenery on people

Artist Gesine Marwedel's paintings are full of life - quite literally.

The German creates her stunning images not on a traditional blank canvas but on the bodies of people, as these breathtaking pictures reveal.

Using her subjects' limbs to create angles for her intricate work, she transforms them into moving masterpieces that represent landscapes and animals.

A model is turned into a human swan in this incredible piece of body art work

A desert scene, complete with camels, is represented on this woman

World cities are merged as Gesine Marwedel tries her hand at a more urban style

In one incredible image, a subject is turned into a human swan, while her other works show desert scenes, a bleak mountain, and a breathtaking cityscape that merges what appears to be Barcelona and Sydney.

Ms Marwedel, from Dortmund, has also turned one person into a flamingo, and ethched eye-catching paintings of an iguana and a tiger.

 

All her body art is created using eudermic colours, which are natural and based on mineral water and thermal mud.

The 25-year-old, who has attracted a large following in her native country, says she was inspired to paint after working at an Indian orphanage on completion of her university degree.

A bleak mountainscape under a moonlit sky transforms this woman

Both men and women are used by the talented artist, whose highly intricate works reveal an incredible eye for detail. A jigsaw puzzle and eyes are shown here

Half-man, half-tiger: With meticulous attention to detail, a tiger painting merges into the model's natural form

Most people would jump out of their skin if they had an iguana on them but, luckily for this woman, it's just a painting, albeit incredibly lifelike

German Gesine Marwedel has attracted a cult following in her native country with work like this

She describes her style as 'mostly realistic or surrealistic' and also paints on traditional canvas using oil.

Traditionally, body art was, and still is, popular among tribal people.

It still survives in its ancient form among the indigenous people of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

Gesine Marwedel gets to work on one of her subjects, this time painting a tree on a beach