Japanese Half-sleeve
- Details
- Created: Thursday, 01 December 2011 00:00
Rachelle has a very beautiful, very traditional Japanese half sleeve on her right arm that she is working on completing. When she contacted me she wanted to have the bird on her upper inner shoulder turned into a Red-tailed Hawk and her inner arm filled with mountain ranges from Juneau, Alaska, where she's from. She is almost finished with a degree in art from a university in New Mexico and has a lot of wonderful ideas to finish out her arm; one is to turn the sleeve into a four elements piece utilizing Hokusai waves. I hope she lets me continue to work on it with her! Here is what she has to say, "I've been influenced by beautiful things and experiences in nature and feel spiritually connected to the earth. This tattoo has developed over the last few years into an elemental themed sleeve with each image representing a spiritual connection to a location and an important life lesson to live by. Choosing the Japanese style of tattooing was important because they have been successful at demonstrating their connection to the earth through art. I plan to finish off the sleeve with flowing ocean water and water animals at the bottom, and creating a sky behind the clouds on the top." Click on the Read more link to see the drawings and some after photos.
Like a lot of people I tattoo, Sara got a tattoo when she was younger that she wanted to have covered up and converted into something that is more meaningful for her now. She chose an excellent concept: the Phoenix, symbol of transformation and change. It conforms perfectly to the "Cover up/Camouflage Formula". The new tattoo cover up/image must be larger, with more detailed line work, use colors of dark value and utilize position to move and fool the eye. We decided to have the phoenix wrapping around Sara's upper arm, to make it look like it's flying/moving around her arm. Click on the Read more link to see the drawing, before pix and some process photos.
James is a local writer currently focusing on the fantasy/science fiction genre. He has written several books, three that comprise the Dragon Flames Saga. He decided on a back tattoo that would feature some of his favorite characters from that world. "For my back I wanted to have a mural of the Dragon Flames Saga to remind me of my largest and most memorable story," he says. He started out with a list of about 19 of them (!!) but we were able to pare it down to five of the most important ones, after some serious negotiating. After several sessions, we are getting closer to being finished with his tattoo. Click on the Read more link to see the drawing I created (using his detailed character descriptions) and some process photos.
Sandy had two small, old kanji tattoos on her back when she came in to see me about an idea that she had for a complete back tattoo. (See the Before photo below, by clicking the Read more link.) She wanted the tattoo to be about her family--- herself and her two children--with totems to represent each one. The main image was to be the Tree of Life in the rough shape of a dragonfly. At that time, she wanted to keep the kanji in and add more kanji for her children's names underneath their images and the kanji symbol for "Family" in the center of the tree, which would be in the middle of her back. Then she decided that she wanted to take all of the kanji out and to put the Celtic Trifecta in the middle, as that was more in line with her family's heritage. I altered the stencil to reflect that. Then I pumped some white over the old tats and we inked in her grayline. Graylining is a technique that is used for getting the stencil in the skin when there is a large area to cover. I go in super fast and light with a small needle. The resulting line work is not solid or very uniform but allows me to get my "blue print" in the skin, so that I can get the outline in without losing the stencil, even if it takes several sessions. Click on the Read more link to see the drawing and photos.
Lisa is a model and came in to see me about an existing tattoo that she had on her chest. She wanted a bleeding heart tattoo that reflected her ideas about beauty and was unhappy with the version that she received. (See the photo below, by clicking the Read more link, where you can see the old tattoo underneath the stencil.) We surfed the web together, when she came in for her consultation, looking for photos of bleeding hearts that reflected a more "realistic" or botanical view of the plant than "hearts on a stick" as one person had described her old tat. We pulled some great images, I created a drawing for her and we inked in her grayline today. Graylining is a technique that is used for getting the stencil in the skin, when there are time limitations on the session; I go in super fast and light with a small needle. The resulting line work is not solid or very uniform but allows me to get my "blue print" in the skin, so that we can take our time with the outline, if need be. Click on the Read more link to see the drawing and process photos.
Erica has many small tattoos, including some lovely gray work pieces of a pine cone near her right ankle and fiddle heads on the back of her left leg. She decided that her next tattoo would be a beet and when she came into the shop to talk to me about it I said, "Yes! I've always wanted to tattoo a beet or some other type of leafy vegetable for somebody! I'm so glad that you came in. What do you think about using botanical illustrations as a starting point for the drawing?" She says that a lot of people ask her,"Why a beet? Why would you want to get that tattooed on you?" And she answers that as a vegetarian, she loves to eat beets, that they are her favorite vegetable and a good source of nutrients. As a fellow vegetarian, I think that's great. I also like that she has leg tattoos that reflect the bounty of nature and I was very happy to have her beet "growing" up her leg. It's a fantastic placement and will be really vibrant when we get it done. We just have one more color session to complete and then the beet will be finished. Click on the Read more link to see the drawing and process photos.
April had an old tattoo of a sunflower with a little lady bug, on her outer right leg that she wanted covered up. When she came in to see me for a consultation, she knew that she wanted the new imagery to be flowers but she wasn't sure exactly what flowers we should use, although she liked Gerber daisies. We discussed using the birth flowers of her loved ones, as well as the daisies and I created a drawing for her with them all mixed in together, following the Cover up/Camouflage formula: new image is larger, more detailed with dark value colors and use positioning to fool and move the eye. When April saw it she decided that we should just use the Gerber daisies--keep it simple--but that she liked the way I wrapped the flowers around her leg. Click on the Read more link to see the before and after pictures.
Francois has just recently taken the Buddhist Precepts and was thinking that it might be nice to get a tattoo to commemorate that step in his life. It would be his first tat. He was looking online for a local tattoo artist and found a friend of his on my website; she had just taken the Precepts with him at the same zendo, Dharma Rain in SE Portland. What an amazing coincidence! When he came in for his consultation, he had a couple of images that he thought might make for a good tattoo but wasn't sure what would work best and left it up to me to decide. He said, "I wanted a tattoo that reflects what I am striving for in my practice and I wanted to give Victoria the freedom to create a beautiful image. This tattoo does that, in that the bamboo represents flexibility/adaptability and acceptance of the wind/conditions. This brings about enlightenment/freedom represented in the leaves which resemble birds. The process of doing this is beautiful, as is the tattoo and all living beings." Click on the Read more link to see the drawing I created for him (Zen style bamboo flowing over his upper arm) and photos from our first session (outline.)
This is Helina; she will be attending Beauty School at the Aveda Institute soon. She came in to see me last year for her first tattoo--- a cupcake and stars on her upper back, that a friend of hers had drawn. Now she has a little time before she starts at Aveda, so she asked me to put some Old School/Traditional style roses on her feet. Feet and hand tats are tricky to tattoo and are pretty hard for most people to endure. So I was a bit reluctant and told her all about the caveats but she said she could do it and she did! She sat for both outlines and gray shading like a champ, which made my job a lot easier. Click on the Read more link to see the drawings and photo of our first session.
Jacob is one of my neighbors here at ActivSpace SE on Main St.; he and his brother Kyle just bought Spoke Coffee on Wheels, which is a great coffee shop located in the southeast corner of the building. He has some nice tattoos by other artists that he has collected; in particular a cool raven on his upper left arm. He wanted to add on to the piece and make it more about what inspired his idea for the work: The Raven, the epic poem written by Edgar Allan Poe. We started talking about what he wanted the piece to convey and then I created a drawing for him, with the idea of having a cellar door behind the existing raven tat and the last part of the poem flowing around his arm, interrupted by flying ravens. "Victoria morphed my weak description of what I envisioned and made a masterpiece. I had an existing tattoo that I wanted to keep and was amazed by how she incorporated the new ideas [with it] to make a meaningful piece of art." Click on the Read more link to see the drawing and photos from our first session.