Practice Makes... Paintings

Recently one of the tattooists at my shop was asked to leave and we have since hired someone new and he is quite the artist! His preferred medium is acrylic paint and I found this interesting.

 I talked with him about what he uses and how he does his paintings and he seems to have inspired everyone at the shop to give it a try. Including me! He told me that if you can paint well, you can tattoo well. I figured this is a great way to practice my color theory so I went out and bought a tiny 6"x8" canvas to do my first practice piece on.

The first image is of the sketch I did on the canvas and that took about an hour to complete. I then proceeded to paint and it was a very frustrating experience. Turns out painting is actually kind of difficult. The painting took about 10 hours to complete (how embarrassing.) So as is obvious, the proportions got skewed, compromises were made, but I'll chalk it up to a good first try. Hopefully my next attempt will be on a larger canvas but I already think it was very helpful because it made me REALLY think about my colors. It was fun to try a new medium and I hope it improves my tattooing.