What started as a hobby has turned into a specialty talent for local artist and drag performer Michael Michelle. This summer he unveiled his first body painting art calendar, Skin, which is already selling out at local bookstores and is the number-one selling calendar at Borders Books in Mission Valley. In addition to painting his friends around the holidays Michelle also does about 20 paid events a year.

“Most of the people I [paint and photograph] are friends,” Michelle said. “I like shooting friends because they come out better. It’s more of a personal thing — not only being naked in body paint, it means more to them than a person that comes in and gets paid.… They really want to get painted and I get my friends to step over that boundary.”

In the case of the photo shoot for this magazine’s cover, Timm Rogers waited through close to two hours of painting before his vampire guise began to take shape.

“It actually doesn’t feel like I have much on me at all; it feels like skin,” Rogers said about his makeup. “I went and looked at it up close and it looks really freaky. It’s really cool, but I don’t look like myself when I look in the mirror. It’s phenomenal.”

Michelle points out that the body paint also helps people lose their inhibitions about being naked.

“They don’t feel self conscious when people are gawking over their pictures or commenting on how awesome they look,” he says. “They gain self confidence when people start to talk about their pictures, and that’s the best part.”

For Sean Sedgewick, the victim on this week’s cover, Halloween is all about fantasy.

“I love pretending,” said Sedgewick, who is an actor in addition to working as a bartender at The Flame. “Being an actor is the best job in the world because every four months you get to go out and explore something new.”

He adds, “Most people aren’t gangsters, they’re not soldiers, they haven’t been to war, but it gives them a chance to romanticize the horrible things in life. Most of us would admit that demons and Satan and burning in hell is bad, but one night a year we get to be hedonists… and bring out sides of yourself that you wouldn’t normally.”

Sedgewick, who is straight, believes that Halloween is even more exciting in the gay community because they are able to let go of their inhibitions more easily.

“I love [the body paint] because I am a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan,” Rogers says of his transformation into a vampire. “There is so much sexuality in them. They are always so sexy, like Brad Pitt in Interview with a Vampire. Anne Rice does a good job sexualizing the vampire thing.”

One of Michelle’s most requested themes for body painting is superheroes, which combine perfect physiques with skin tight costumes — perfect for body painting.

“I think they’re like a fantasy,” Michelle says, “Gay guys love fantasy; they love dressing up, and if they are not going to be a drag queen they are going to be super heroes. I mean everybody wants to solve crimes and save the day.…

“A lot of people say, ‘I can’t model for you because my body is not perfect’ and it’s more of a challenge for me to take a normal body and change it into something,” he adds. “In my next calendar I have a 350-pound girl for one of the models and she’s beautiful. If you look at the calendar they’re all different types of people.”

To see more of Michael Michelle’s artwork, pick up a copy of his Skin calendar available at Obelisk, Rainbow Road and the Borders bookstore in Mission Valley.