Friday 12 June 2009

tattoo project - the beginning

I started collecting ideas and spending too much time on BMEzine reading up on experiences, techniques, and what crap or good tattoos look like.

Back in september '08 I decided to finally finally finalise my tattoo ideas and go for it, and fell in love with Ritual Art Tattoo's 's attitude to tattooing as an art form. So I showed tattoo artist David Corden my idea and he said 'alright then' or something equally enthusiastic.

Anyway, it is still not finished because a) it's quite big and b) I heal weirdly (ink comes out in plasma/discolours). It's been really enjoyable, and I have loved the experience and THE PAAAAIN.

But here is the process from beginning to present day for you lucky people to witness..

I started with basic design ideas, playing with layout/composition and trying to see how it would sit on my chest.


I sourced images of each component of the tattoo ready for David to get an idea of what the fuck I was talking about. Apparently this makes his job a lot easier. Next time I'll just bring in a scrap of paper :)


So then came the outline.

Then filling the centre. This is where it went a bit weird. This session was about 6 hours long, which is apparently too long for my skin, because it went from this:
To this. check that blobby non-detail. Needless to say me and David were pissed off, David beat me up, I tried to file a lawsuit, he threatened my family, I dropped the case and we agreed to just carry on with the tattoo. (Please note most of that isn't true. Mostly.)
David figured I could only go for a couple of hours at a time before plasma started pouring out in unprecedented quanitites and washed the ink away (see the green above).
So below is the result of a relatively short sitting working on the white hue on the wings.

I had another session yesterday, in which David went over the feotus in the middle, trying to get the detail back in. My skin sucks :( photo of that up soon. Probably.









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