Body Art

Body art according to Wikipedia is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body. The most common forms of body art are tattoos, body piercings, and body painting.

The Australian Museum has a section of the museum dedicated to body art:

Tattooing is one of the oldest forms of body art. The impetus to decorate and adorn is essentially a human characteristic and is something that people have always done. For many people the designs and symbols of adornment can hold great meaning. Similar designs can be found across cultures but their meaning can be significantly different. Within cultures the meaning of certain designs can change across time.

The human body is a unique canvas that has been decorated in many ways for millennia by people all over the world. Since the beginning of human history, people have embellished their bodies for many reasons, but there is no known culture in which people do not paint, pierce, tattoo, reshape, or simply adorn their bodies.

Whether with permanent marks like tattoos or temporary decorations like makeup, clothing, and hairstyles, body art is a way of signaling an individual's place in society, marking a special moment, celebrating a transition in life or simply following a fashion.

And then there is henna:

How to mix henna can be found here.

The crushed leaves of the henna plant, when mixed with other natural ingredients, yields a thick, fragrant paste used for painting hands and feet. The olive green, dried henna powder, once mixed with such ingredients as black tea and coffee, cloves and tamarind, turns dark. Once the paste is applied on the skin, it is allowed to dry, sometimes overnight. The dried henna is scrapped off the skin resulting in a maroon-red stain. Henna has traditionally also been used for hair conditioning and dyeing, skin antiseptic and tonic, and as cloth and leather dye. Henna is a cosmetic and a medicine, but most importantly, it is a marker of beauty, auspiciousness and celebration.

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