Filling in the gaps

Now for Dave.....This man is a great customer, really fun to work with and he has been really patient; waiting for me to be able to tattoo him rather than just getting work done somewhere else.  He has existing tattoos on his arm that I am working around and covering one of them up.  He really likes the way I draw and the style that I naturally draw things in so designing stuff for him has been really fun.  short and sweet....here's some eye candy

The tape still needs another pass.  He'd sat for quite a while by the time we got to this point.

Roses are red (and yellow)

Bit more progress on Duncan's chest.  Managed to get the roses all shaded in a couple of hours,  The wings are healing nicely and the cover up seems to have worked really well.  Cant wait to get more done on this but I'm going to have to wait a little while....christmas is expensive, tattoos can wait!

One chest down

So...I have finished one of the chest pieces I have been working on.  Its been lots of fun (for me anyway, probably not for the guy having it!!)  and both I and the recipient of the piece are really happy with the finished tattoo.  Im really pleased with the colour density in this piece, it really glows.  The picture shows it all 100% healed apart from the blue background.  There's obviously things I might do differently next time I approach a piece like this, but that is what my apprenticeship is about.  I've been able to give someone a better tattoo than they ever imagined and also learn some things in the process, job done

Paul sat like an absolute trooper and was a pleasure to tattoo.  Fingers crossed he'll be back fro some more work

Goodbye stars

Duncan is a lovely guy, and a very patient man.  I designed this piece for him in may, and he very kindly waited for me to tattoo it.  So he has waited nearly seven months and I appreciate that sort of loyalty more than you'd believe.  Its been a really fun piece even though it is a cover up (he originally had two nautical stars just below his collar bones.) It was amusing seeing how off the stars were position wise when we put the stencils on for this, one was at least an inch closer to his sternum!  Anyhoo...here it is, a fair few more hours to go but I'm really pleased so far, it was fun seeing the stars disappear! 

one more to go

I've loved doing this piece, its been lots of fun and nice to have some clean skin to work on (as many of the designs I have to do at the moment are cover ups.)  We are nearly there, one more session to go to add some background and tighten up a few parts, but I'm really pleased with it.

Grrrrrrr

I may be a tattooer, but I still find the call for dragon tattoos quite astonishing.  This is not to say I don't enjoy doing it I just find the numbers of people (generally men) who want them somewhat overwhelming.   I tattooed my first dragon yesterday, its a cover up but only a small one so the majority of the dragon is on clean skin and it was really fun to do.  All those scales though, makes my brain hurt and my eyes wobble!  Colour is going to be fun...probably going reds and oranges, he's reasonably manly so I doubt he'll let me go for baby blue purple and pink, oh well!!

On another note, I'm getting tattooed myself soon too!! Its going to be the start of my blackwork/dotwork sleeve.  Lu, one of the other artists at the studio is going to do it.  I cant wait, her dotwork is pretty amazing so I'm really looking forward to seeing it evolve.  She does however have the tedious task of blacking in almost half of my arm to start with!!  I will make her cakes to ease the boredom!

progress

I am absolutely shattered, but I am trying to make the effort to post so apologies if little sense is made!  My boss is on holiday for a month and he has kindly said I can use his room in the tattoo studio to work out of.  This means I am no longer stuck to tattooing one day a week and it also makes things much easier for my customers.  So far I have pretty much been tattooing every day which is awesome if not extremely tiring.  I never thought this would be an easy profession, but my eyes have really been opened to just how hard it is to work solidly.

I now have a few big pieces that I'm working on so seeing them progress is really fun.  I did some more work on the chest piece I started last week today, and really enjoyed it.  Lots of colour...which is my favourite thing to do!  Sorry about the pictures, forgot the camera so had to make do with Iphone.  This has really dulled down the colour and seems to flatten the tones, there's a real gradient in the reds and purples but it just doesn't show here..... ah well ( silly me) must remember camera......