Hellbend Body Paints
In Hellbend culture, body paint is commonplace for special events and social gatherings like seasonal festivals, weddings, funerals, and more. As such, there are important details about body paint in Hellbend culture that are not only important to recognize for most Hellbends, especially those within Avakaron, but also important to understanding how Hellbends use body paint in their cultural mourning processes, like the Hibicy. Because of its significance, body paint is used almost exclusively for planned events or social gatherings. One does not aimlessly walk around Avakaron with body paint just because. Bodypaint is also considered extremely formal due to its seriousness in convey emotions and concepts and thus may not be present at all festivities and events, especially if the celebration itself is more casual.
There are two primary aspects of a Hellbend’s body paint that holds significant meaning, one being the colour of the paint itself and the other being the location of the pigments.
Colors and Combinations
Because body paint is used in a variety of ceremonies, the colour of the paint that is used holds much weight to the meaning behind the attire. Usually, the only distinguishable differences between body painting for a seasonal festival and a wedding, for instance, is often the colour of the paint used. Each colour has its own separate meaning when used by itself, but colours can easily play off each other and enhance or modify their meanings when combined, especially when taking into account which colours are beside which. The use of colour in body paint can be as simple as wishing someone a happy birthday or as complex as displaying one’s internal philosophy on life depending on how detailed oriented the wearer is on the colours being used and where the colours are located.
White
White paint is most often used to represent the bringing of life. As such, the use of white paint exclusively without any additional colours is most often used for the literal day of someone’s birth or for celebrations dedicated to the metaphorical rebirth of an individual.
Pink
Pink paint represents love and affection. If one wishes to visually and openly express their adoration for an individual, whether it be romantically or platonically, an event can be held between the individuals where one or both could wear pink body paint. Events with pink body paint are most commonly seen on anniversary dates, honeymoons, or within family reunions.
White and Pink
White and pink is most often used for weddings. While pure white means a literal birthing of a new person, the combination of white and pink serves to represent a new life for the couple. In a wedding, the couple is joining together and creating a new life and family for themselves, hence the white, but they are also openly showing and devoting their love to one another, hence the pink. It is very frowned upon to use this combination of colours outside of a marriage context and thus is the only colour combination that has near 100% uniformity in meaning when combined together. If one is wearing white and pink body paint, one is getting married. Period.
Yellow
While not used often individually, yellow is most commonly seen as a representation of joy or acceptance. Pairing yellow with other colours shows an acceptance or general happiness for what the other colours are representing. So yellow paired with pink can represent the acceptance of love (which is a common colour combination for wedding goers who wish to show support for the couple) and yellow paired with white shows joy for the life of an individual, especially in the context of a birthday celebration. Yellow is most commonly seen paired with blue, however, to represent the season of Summer.
Blue
Blue is another colour not often used outside of its seasonal context, however, if one were to use blue body paint at an event, it would be understood to mean justice, balance, or stability, especially in light of the other colours present. For instance, blue paired with brown could represent financial stability while blue and red could represent one’s desire for justice of blood that was spilt. Blue’s meaning is extremely dependent on the context of the colours surrounding it as well as the social context of the wearer, aka what event or social instance the person is attending.
Orange
Orange is a colour often used in combination with green to celebrate the coming of the Spring season, but orange is also commonly used in tandem with other colours to represent passion and intensity. If one wants to fully emphasize the meaning of a particular colour combination, especially amidst a multi-coloured body paint, orange would be the colour to use.
Green
One of the two colours of Spring, green is used to represent wellness and longevity and is one of the few colours that can be as commonly seen by itself as it is with other colours. Pure green body paint is often something someone receives from family and friends rather than the individual adorning themselves, especially when one is ill or injured. Painting the ill and injured in full green is an act of sending good wishes, similar to a good luck charm that’s supposed to bring wellness to the person receiving it. Green paired with other colours however is usually self-reflexive, done by the wearer themselves to show their hopes for good health as well longevity for themselves and for those around them, especially in matters like love, life, or happiness depending on the colour combination.
Purple
Purple is a very uncommon colour outside of its season context. When paired with grey, purple is used to represent the season of Winter. However, when not combined with grey, purple can mean unity, especially the unity of two parties or two concepts. By itself without the presence of other colours, purple represents knowledge.
Red
Probably the least used colour of all the body paints due to its lack of visibility on most Hellbend skin. If a Hellbend wishes to use red body paint to represent a meaning rather than it being used to cover up blemishes in the skin, one would need to use a much darker shade of red if they are light-skinned or a much brighter shade of red if they are dark-skinned. Red in body paint is one of the two colours of the Fall season and represents blood, both physical and metaphorical as well as the Hellbend race as a whole. As such, red is actually a colour commonly associated with non-Hellbend people. A non-Hellbend adorning red body paint on themselves would represent respect and acceptance of Hellbend culture while a Hellbend adorning a non-Hellbend in red paint will show an acceptance of said person into their culture or particular family. However, due to the rarity of either of these situations occurring, red is most often seen within family gatherings and reunions to show love or pride for their bloodline or on individuals who wish to express a desire for blood and revenge.
Brown
One of the colours that represent the Fall season, brown is mostly used to represent work ethic, wealth, and the willingness to take matters into ones own hands. It’s not very common outside of it’s seasonal context.
Grey
Grey is a colour used to represent Winter as well as the concept of flow and change. It can be used to express a change in feelings or philosophies, a change in social status, a change in personal growth, or a change in location. As such, grey is most commonly seen in events related to moving between longhouses or events like graduations.
Black
Black can be considered the most versatile colour due to its many meanings. Black can represent things like death and mourning as well as ideas like courage, mercy, and forgiveness. The exclusive use of black is traditionally used for Hibicies to represent the upcoming death of an individual and the sorrow that comes with their loss. Despite the numerous meanings black can convey, pure black is exclusively used for Hibicies and mourning (similar to the combination of white and pink being used only by a couple during their wedding) to represent the upcoming death of an individual and the sorrow that comes with their loss. In order to portray the many other concepts black can represent, like forgiveness, mercy, and courage, black needs to be paired with other colours.
Black and White
Mercy is yet another concept black can convey, for Hellbend warriors who adorned black paint were known for their mercy towards their enemies. Hibicy warriors, as they are sometimes called, have already accepted their own death through their mourning ritual before battle, but they also understand that their enemies, especially Humans, likely have not accepted this fate and thus are not prepared for it. In cases where the situation is not dire, these warriors have been known to spare prisoners of battle, giving them another chance to reconcile with death on another day. In addition to this, Hibicy warriors who did not die in battle and were able to return home were traditionally painted with white paint to give thanks to the gods for sparing their life. One is most likely to see black and white body paint on those who have returned from particularly treacherous voyages or battles or on individuals who determine punishments for others, like judges, council members, or those a part of the Champion Sect during a designated hearing, similar to that of a Human court hearing.
Black and Pink
Black paired with pink is most commonly used to represent forgiveness. The idea of black representing the concept of forgiveness is because of traditional Hibicy. The Hibicy is used as a way of mourning and as a way of saying goodbye to the person receiving the paint. As such, it is very common for Hellbends during a Hibicy to express their apologies and forgive one another of any past transgressions so the individual does not die with guilt or with grudges. So under this context, especially when emphasized with the colour pink, black represents the death of the grudge or the transgression while pinks represent the new feelings that have taken its place. This colour combination usually is not the only colour within a body paint since there is rarely specific events dedicated to forgiving another person of their transgressions. Instead, this colour combination usually goes along with other colours that would better represent the event that is taking place. For instance, one may show up to a birthday party with white and yellow paint to show the joy of being at the celebration but also adorning black and pink to show that the person in which the celebration is for has been forgiven of some past transgression.
Black and Orange
Black and Orange when not paired with other colours usually means Courage and Valor. Yellow is often paired with this combo to emphasize the courageousness of the individual.
Designs
Despite the act of painting body art on oneself or others is very common, there are very few specific designs that are used to convey any sort of meaning, the use of body paint being much more abstract. To Hellbends, that act of using the body paint and the colours of the paint holds the symbolic meaning of joy or sorrow rather than the specific pictures or symbols. People are free to use personal symbols and images that hold meaning to themselves, but there are few, if any symbols at all that all of Hellbend society would understand. So when one talks about a body paint’s design, one is not specifically talking about images, sigils, or other patterns, but rather the intricacy of the lines of paint, its placement, and its colour.
A majority of body painting, especially for less formal events and for the poor, is done with one’s fingers and hands. Dots, lines, and swirls can easily be created without the use of brushes or other utensils and thus many body paints on the average commoner is not very detailed in terms of line intricacy. However, if one wishes to convey more complex feelings or ideas, brushes and other tools are used to create much cleaner and more intricate patterns. These details can be important because the placement of colours in proximity to one another and how they interact in the body paint can alter the meaning of the colours. For instance, if the colours orange, pink, green, and yellow are all used in a single body painting, orange could 1: be put near the pink and yellow to emphasize one’s joy for the love they share with a particular person, 2: be put near the pink and green, emphasizing the desire for longevity in one’s passion and love for another, or 3: be put near the yellow and green to show one’s intense happiness for the wellness and longevity of a relationship they already have.
However, there is more than one way to change the meaning of a colour. In addition to putting colours near one another to create more complex feelings, putting said colours on certain parts of the body can also have certain significances. The eyes, horns, mouth, and chest are usually the bare minimum of where one should paint if they want to have a traditional body paint design because these areas hold the most significance. The horns and mouth are used to show pride for one’s race for these features aside from their skin are the most obvious differences between a Hellbend and a Human. The eyes and the chest are used to represent oneself because the eyes are the windows to the heart and the heart is where one’s soul truly lies. If one wishes to participate in Hellbend body painting practices, it is suggested that one paints at least two of these areas, one area to represent their pride for their race and one for themselves.
Article Credit goes to Geronimo.
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