Chris Duncan of our marketing department recently had the burdensome chore of accompanying our painted ladies on Super Bowl weekend. Between ushering the beautiful women around and trying not too ruin his new sweater with pain smudges, Chris managed to interview another guy with a truly sweet gig: the bodypaint artist Mark Frazier. Here is his report:

Mark Frazier, a pioneer in the art of bodypainting, has more than twenty years experience in the field. The house bodypainter for Playboy Mansion parties, Mark works other special events, notably the Playboy Super Bowl Party in Arizona, which he finished just in time to board a plane and get to L.A. where at 9 AM the next day he had to begin painting girls for the Mansion party that night. When we spoke to Mark, he was on his way to the Museum of Contemporary Art to discuss his next job--painting girls to replicate statues with an anime theme. Don't worry, they'll still be naked.

PLAYBOY: How did you manage to turn painting women into a full time job?

FRAZIER: The first time was in 1985, before Photoshop was an option. I was hired to paint photorealistic backgrounds for different shoots. At one job, I was asked by a photographer if I would paint the model's body with a design. I got the right answer to my question of "how much?" and decided to go for it. We experimented with tempera paint at first, but that ends up cracking and pulling hair out. Now, we use airbrushing equipment to get the right look.

PLAYBOY: How many girls would you say you've painted over the years?

FRAZIER: Definitely over 1000. I try to paint about thirty girls each month. So in 2007, I probably painted almost 360 girls.

PLAYBOY: Who are some of the notable women that you've painted?

FRAZIER: I painted Tiffany Fallon for the February 2008 cover. I've also painted Sara Jean Underwood when she was on the Girls of the Pac 10 cover. So that's two Playmates of the Year right there. They also had me paint Vida Guerra as a tiger a few years ago. But I've even painted Christy Hemme before anybody had heard of her. She was actually an extra girl we used to create the model pose chart for the "real" models who were being photographed. So she would show up before them and get all of the poses done so the other models had exact instructions and pictures of what they needed to do.

PLAYBOY: Have you ever bodypainted any men?

FRAZIER: No men, just women. We have a couple rules for our operation. Rule #1: Only paint girls. Rule #2: Refer to Rule #1. I guess we've painted men a few times, but it's never the full body. I've painted items like a chest plate and armor on guys. We did that for Victoria Fuller's husband. That's pretty much it, though.

PLAYBOY: What has been your favorite design over the years?

FRAZIER: The Bellhop (model Blair O'Neal, interview tomorrow) was really neat for me. The first time is always good, but it can get old. I've painted about a million French maids. As an example, I'm working with NBC on some designs for Knight Rider. I really like the design we have with tire tracks on the model. But I can pretty safely assume that they'll want something with a Knight Rider logo t-shirt and headlights on the girl's boobs. So it always depends on the client. And we're not just talking Hef parties, we've painted girls for the biggest lesbian party in California.

PLAYBOY: What's it like to work for Hef?

FRAZIER: Hef has very specific goals that he wants accomplished. For one, it has to look like real clothes -- he loves lingerie designs. Usually, he looks at 12-20 mock ups that I create and will pick about three from the new set. Then we'll go over the old designs I've done and he'll pick the rest from there. With Hef, it is most important that the design actually looks authentic.

(Tomorrow, Chris talks bodypainting with a model Blair.)