Let me preface this by saying that there's some degree of nudity involved in this proof. I'm covered in paint, and so it doesn't come off as blatant nudity, but I feel the need to start with this disclaimer.

In approaching this task, I divided the "self" that was to be painted into three parts: Myself, as Subject; Myself, as Object; Myself, as I See Myself.


Let's start with a Before picture of me and my workspace/bathroom:



Part I: Myself, as Subject

I purchased some washable paint at the drug store, bared myself, and set to work. True to this task's title, I used my fingers to paint, although this is mostly because I don't have any paintbrushes and couldn't find any in a quick search of the store when I bought the paint. I started by painting my face. I always tend to lean towards abstract, and since my face and body are a strange canvas and I was working with less than ideal materials, this instance was no exception. Here are a few pictures of the work in progress:


I mostly painted while looking at myself in the mirror-- probably because I started with my face and very much required the mirror with that part. It really affected the feeling of painting myself. Looking down at my painted body felt very different than looking at my painted self in the mirror. I tried to take a picture of how that felt, with limited success:


As I worked my way down, I tried to look in the mirror less and less, which I think greatly improved the quality of my painting (although it still looks mostly like colorful lines and blobs). I offer the following pictures of the finished product:



Part II: Myself, as Object

In painting myself, I also wanted to create a lasting representation of myself that I could look at from a distance, as other people see me.

I taped a length of paper to my door (it's actually pretty wrapping paper that I had around, as you can see in the second picture.)



The idea was the make a print of my painted self. However, the time it took to apply the paint meant that a lot of it was dry by the time I finished. However, since it was water-based paint, all I had to do was re-wet it. Lacking a spray bottle, I decided the best way to do this was just to step in the shower for a second. This worked a little too well-- the paint instantly began melting off of me, running down in drips. I dripped runny paint all over the bathroom as I jumped out of the shower, and I ended up walking on my towel all the way to the paper in order not to drip paint all over the floor. I pressed myself against the paper, turning my head so that both sides of my face would imprint. Then I scurried to go wash the resting of the melting paint off! Here are the results:



Part III: Myself, as I See Myself

One thing that became very obvious in the process of painting myself was the difference between looking at my body and looking at the reflection of myself in the mirror. What's interesting is that inevitably, it's this reflection that I know best-- it's the way that I see myself. I've heard of research that demonstrated that people actually have greater affinity for pictures of themselves that have been flipped along the vertical axis so that they look more like the mirror reflections that the persons sees and has gotten used to.

I decided to paint myself in my mirror. I stood in front of my mirror and painted mostly my outlines. I was still using my fingers for brushes, so the finer details like the face are pretty crude. I had to close one eye to do this well, and some parts, like the hand I was using to paint, were too messy to make distinct. Here's the results:



Though I've washed the paint off myself and cleaned my mirror, I still have the print of my body on paper stretched over my door.