Press kit

Paul Roustan • Body Painter & Photographer

Paul Roustan is a Los Angeles-based body painter and photographer who has spent over 20 years transforming the human form through paint and image. Roustan also evolves the work with technology, creating virtual worlds, augmented reality, and embracing AI.

This page provides editorial ready background, representative work, and downloadable assets for media use.

About the artist

Short description

Paul Roustan is a Los Angeles based body painter and photographer whose work explores illusion, impermanence, and the living canvas of the human body. A winner of the North American Bodypaint Championships, he has built a global audience through YouTube (480k+ subscribers) while expanding his practice across photography, virtual worlds, augmented reality, and embracing AI.

Story

I was drawing for as long as I can remember. It was the one thing I consistently excelled at, and teachers and classmates always encouraged me to pursue art.

When I was 25, I worked as a freelance illustrator for a magazine. One day, I pitched the idea of creating a body painting for a photo spread, even though I had never actually painted on a person before.

They said yes.

So I figured it out.

The moment I painted my first model, I realized I had found myself.

What surprised me wasn't just that I enjoyed painting on a person. It was that the artwork didn't stop when I put down the brush. The model became part of the artwork. Every movement changed the painting. The piece was alive!

Painting on the human body also freed me from something I had struggled with for years: brutal self-critique. A canvas can sit in the studio for weeks while I obsess over every detail. A body painting doesn't allow that. You have a few hours to create something beautiful before it's gone.

That time pressure matches the way I naturally create. I'm an impatient artist. I love the result more than the process, and body painting demands instinct over perfection.

I've now been creating body painting art for over 20 years. During that time, I've watched the creative world transform through the rise of social media, the creator economy, virtual worlds, and now AI. Each shift has challenged artists to rethink how they create and connect with audiences.

Rather than resisting those changes, I've embraced them. I've built an audience on YouTube, experimented with immersive virtual galleries in the metaverse, explored augmented reality and volumetric capture, and recently begun incorporating AI into my creative process. For me, technology has never been the destination. It's simply another tool that allows me to tell stories in new ways while staying true to the art form that captured me more than two decades ago.

The artwork still exists for only a brief moment before it disappears, surviving through photographs, video, and the memories of the people who experienced it. That sense of transformation and impermanence is what continues to inspire me today.

Career highlights

Through photography, Roustan’s temporary painted works become lasting visual compositions. His practice spans fine art, editorial, and commercial work, with features in GQ, Playboy, Maxim, The New York Post, and The Chicago Sun-Times. He is an alumnus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Rhode Island School of Design.

Key details

Los Angeles-based body painter and photographer
over 20 years creating body painting art
Winner: North American Bodypaint Championships
Alumnus: School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Rhode Island School of Design
YouTube creator with 480k+ subscribers; work spans fine art, editorial, commercial, and digital formats
Explores virtual worlds, augmented reality, volumetric capture, and AI as creative tools
Featured in GQ, Playboy, Maxim, The New York Post, The Chicago Sun-Times, and international exhibitions

Photos

Image caption sheet, credits and filenames (PDF)

Headshots and sample work for editorial use. Captions below each thumbnail may be used directly or adapted. The same text is in the image caption sheet PDF above. Click an image to open the full-resolution file in a new tab.