Mark Greenawalt has been interested in art since childhood. Even his kindergarten report card commented on his artistic talents. In middle school he accepted the job of painting corporate logos and advertisements on the entire homerun fence for the little league fields, painted an album cover for a gospel group, and won a Halloween window painting contest two years in row painting the headless horseman in sixth grade and Ghostrider in seventh. In high school he further honed his artistic abilities and won several ribbons in juried galleries and state fairs. Taking a hiatus from visual art, Greenawalt spent a decade or so playing guitars and keyboards in rock and roll bands and even moved to Nashville for several years to try his hand at songwriting. While there, he came across an article about a bodypainter named Pashur and discovered the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue with Joanne Gair’s painted-on bathing suits. It was time to get back to painting and he was really looking forward to working on the innovative new canvas of the human body.
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In 2000, Greenawalt moved to Arizona and started planning ideas for bodypaintings. First was a spider and web on a friends back, then an airbrushed sunset on another friend’s back, and yet a third friend offered her full body for a Queen of Spades motif. With these three bodypaintings completed, he began marketing his artform through the use of an on-line portfolio website http://www.FutureClassX.com. Greenawalt had already been dabbling with the internet when he was publishing his songs under the company name of Future-Class X Publishing (a play on words for “future classics”) so everything was already in place to start adding images to the website. His promotional efforts landed him some corporate gigs for nightclub events and he started demonstrating his body art techniques in various galleries and sci-fi conventions.
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A big break came in 2001 when Airbrush Action Magazine did a two page spread on his bodypainted cheetah with an accompanying article. This article led to an endorsement from Badger Airbrush and national attention from several bodypaint manufacturers. In 2002 his work was featured on the cover of Playtime Magazine and then in 2003 he wrote an article for Face and Body Art Magazine which subsequently helped to get him invited to teach at the Face and Body Art International Convention. Around this same time frame, his portfolio expanded to include some work in independent films. As lead make-up artist for the film adaptation of the prequel to the graphic novel series The Villikon Chronicles, he was asked to speak at four film festivals and three science fiction conventions. Two of his later film projects are included on the Internation Movie Data Base website IMDB.com.
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More recent accomplishments include a bodypainting stint at the Playboy Mansion, a bodypainting stint for traveling roadshow The Body Art Ball, being an instructor at the first U.S. Bodypainting Competition in New Mexico, and corporate projects for major brands such as Budlight, Maxim, Tuaca, Heineken, Smirnoff, Camel, Dos Equis, and Playboy Magazine. He has completed nearly 400 bodypainting projects and has plans for several hundred more. Visit Mark’s website at http://www.futureclassx.com which has now grown to include literally 1,000 web pages and thousands of images and informative content.

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