Practice... Again

Well... yes. A practice assignment I was given quite some time ago. The assignment was to look at the provided image (left) and compile it into one cohesive image (right) which took me forever. It was much harder than I thought it would be! The trick is having to come up with filler pieces for parts not seen clearly, if seen at all. My pencil drawing here is just a quick sketch trying to get all the pieces in place. Probably took about 3 hours and is about 6"x12".

Useless Post Full of Uselessness

A pointless post updating the world on my chest piece. Obviously, I'm not tattooing my own chest so it really doesn't belong here and in order to not look like a joke compared to an artist who has been tattooing for much longer than I have I will upload this artistic blurry picture I took while I was getting worked on.

You've Got Blue On You

A good friend of mine, James, (hey I wonder if he reads this blog... Hi James!) has come to me for an entire sleeve! Boy oh boy, this is a huge project. I've taken on one other sleeve project and I believe I'm getting faster and James' idea requires less preparation between sessions so perhaps it will go faster. We will see, I'm not really sure what to expect as far as time commitment goes.

When I was initially approached with the design I was definitely intimidated. It is essentially a random series of paint spots and splatters in four or five different colors. This is a deceptive project because on paper, in photoshop, or in front of an easel it would be easy to accomplish but because this is a tattoo and I cannot splatter anything (yknow, having to use little tiny needles to scar the skin and what not) it becomes a bit of a challenge.

Trying to make outlines for the design was a feat. It had to be modified and I had to leave notes to myself within the stencil so that I didn't totally lose my mind. Every artist that works at the shop with me had something to say about this project. Most just hinting that I was crazy for taking it on and that they don't envy my position. One was especially helpful though, and did a good job of calming me down. I admit there was a moment when I confessed to him "I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this..." after my third failed attempt at reading the stencil I had just made. He looked at me with a confused face and said "What? Of course you can." and just that little bit of belief gave me the courage to further an attempt.

The image is of the progress we made in our first sitting. Not much to look at right now since I didn't even finish one color, but holy moley is that a ton of work. This much took about 4 hours including stenciling.

Is That a Walrus?

Yes, yes it is.

About 4 hours of work thus far, including making the stencil. With the lines done we have one more session schedules next week to finish up with shading.

update: underestimated this! Didn't get to finish it in one session- search for 'animal tattoo' to see other posts about megans tattoo and the progression pictures posted.

Shiva

Observe! More coloring practice done. Lines were found on deviantart.com and coloring is following character design of Shiva from Final Fantasy X. 

Image 1) Done with .02 micron pen on tracing paper, reference used, intended for clean line and coloring practice. outline took about 30 minutes and this image was cleaned up in photoshop.

Image 2) Done with .02 micron pen and prismacolor pencils on tracing paper at a tattoo convention in Chicago. Took about 5 hours to complete and stands about 4"x9". 

This was intended to practice coloring and was finished during a tattoo convention that I attended with my shop. I felt so appreciated there and got tons of compliments on my work. Now I know that drawing at your booth gets you a lot of attention!