Local resident face and body painter Lucie Brouillard can relax for a while now, she has finally achieved a long time ambition.
    On Sunday, July 18, in Austria, she became the World Champion Body Painter in the brush/sponge category, a title that had eluded her for the past three years, coming third place on each of her attempts.
    “I don’t know, I felt very confident this year. That’s the one I wanted. So it’s all done. I have the feeling it is done now,” she told inSide Drumheller.
    When Brouillard featured in our February, 26 edition of inSide Drumheller, she had just come back from Las Vegas, where she had won the first North America Body Painting Championship and brought home her 13th award at top championships.
    She set off for Austria determined this was going to be her year, working with the same model as she painted in Las Vegas, Viktoria Law.
    “When we won in Vegas, we collaborated very well together, we get along and I like her because she has, in my eyes, the perfect body for painting. The feeling of winning as well creates a great bond. She has been doing this for seven years and has never won the first place, so for her, too, it was really nice,” said Brouillard.
    Good choice, some might say, as models were affected by the heat in Austria, in the high 30s everyday. “I was lucky because my model was half Asian so she didn’t sweat as much as the other models. Working in this heat becomes quite a challenge,” she explained, adding many models fainted during the contest.
    While body painters could work in teams of two, and for each theme were allocated six hours to paint their model, Brouillard decided to do it alone, and that got her a new nickname: “The Painting Machine”. 
    The themes for the painting this year were “Sub Cultures“ and “Sources of Power” and Brouillard won by nine points in the brush/sponge body painting category.
    “The competition was close,” she said, “There was a lot of good quality work there.”
    At the World Championship this year, Brouillard slid down one place in the face painting category, coming second.
    “Actually, I was happy to get second, it gives room for another person. A Mexican artist won first place. She really did a beautiful piece.”
    With the world title for body painting under her arm, Brouillard is now concentrating on her longer term plans: to teach body painting at an international level.
    “It’s looking good. So far, I am booked as an instructor in Brazil in January, and I am going to Australia to teach and to judge a competition in February. And that all came in the last week, before I got this title... My aim is to be a good instructor, enough that people really want me and I’ll say, ‘Okay, I’ll go, but you don’t need to pay me, just pay the fare for me and my family [her partner and her two children]. That’s my big plan, so I can bring my family with me to visit the world.”
    Brouillard said she will not be entering the competition next year. “You need to give the chance to other people. I have had everything I wanted, now I just want to teach. I am happy, I got my wish.”