7/13/12

This is a sleeve I'm working on... half sleeve.  I'm pretty excited about it.

This guy loves snow boarding.  He came in with an idea of doing a sun at the cap of his arm, with rays spreading out, through clouds and fading behind some mountain caps.  In front of the distant snow covered mountains is a small hill with ski slopes on it and some kind of foreground element.  Plus he thought it would be cool to throw some roses in it somehow.  We did some searching around on the internet and I put together this reference sheet.

I know, I'm extremely ambitious using Nick Baxter's work for reference.  But I shoot for the stars baby!  Here's a little video clip of me drawing on Kyle.

I was trying to hold my phone with my left hand and actually focus on doing a good job with my right hand and not really let the customer know what I was doing cause I felt kind of stupid.

Today we laid in the tree and started the roses.  Here's what we've got so far.

 And the first session of the flowers.  I intend to ad some pedals without hardlines, and tighten up what's here, plus add some out of focus green leaves to close the gap between the rose and the tree and also to balance out the composition.  I think I'm done with the tree pretty much.  Most of the rest of the tattoo will be hardline free.

He sat for 4 hours straight, he was great.  This was the most fun I've had in a long time.  I told him while we were cleaning up that it was to me what snowboarding must be like to him.  I love my job!

He came back the next day for more pain.  Another hour and a half.  We lined the sun with a thick red outline and colored it in oranges.  Then we outlined the clouds with a wash, they all look horizontal when you're looking at the tattoo straight on, the one in the back looks like it comes in at a strange angle in that pic.  The mountain range is lined in "smoke", a blue gray from eternal.