Tattoo Flash & Self Tattoo

So I have been off of here for a while now, but I have been a busy bee. For starters I passed the tattoo certification exam , so I am officially a licensed NYC Tattoo Artist. I also have been having fun with watercolor and Prismacolor colored pencils. The images I will post are drawn with pencil, and inked with my trusty Micron 0.8 pen. For the 2 or 3 people who actually read this blog you might recognize some of the designs from my Etsy shop.

I also just did my first tattoo on myself today. I am a big fan of the Grateful Dead, so I opted to do a variation of the skull and roses on my left leg above my knee cap. RIP Jerry, Pigpen, Keith & Brent.

A Volunteer From The Audience

So I popped my cherry to coin a phrase. By that I mean that I cleanly, and successfully completed my first tattoo on a live person. My dad's friend John is a staunch NY Mets baseball fan and asked me to ink him. He wanted it on his calf muscle. He was really cool about it all and was confident in my art skills. I was able to finish it in a bit over an hour. He is following the aftercare nicely and its healing well.( It also helps that he has skin like a Rhino ) People can't believe it is the first tattoo I have done. I know it is not perfect, but it came out a lot better than I thought and he really, really loves it so that makes me happy. John wants some Koi on his arm and a devlish mermaid in a martini glass next. Those should be fun to draw out and ink. They will only get better from here on out.

Let me also say that pigskin sucks and is unpredictable. This was so much easier than pigskin. Although pigskin is good to practice on. I think next time I need some to see if the butcher can get me some back pieces. The parts near the belly are too soft and turn mushy. I practiced his design on pigksin ( You can see it on the op of the page), and had to throw it away cause it got so damn mushy. I then decided to finish the design on a piece of the rubber fake skin I had on my work station. While not as good as the real stuff it is firm and you can at least finish a design.

Geisha

So I tried my hand at a portrait today for the first time. This piece of pigskin seemed to behave alot better than usual thank God. I used a 1round liner for the outline. Much Much better. and a 9 mag shader for the rest. Not great but not bad. Im gonna go with mixing my gray washes in larger cups to get more water in the mix.....this Kuro Sumi ink I'm using seems very powerful. Good product. More to come

Swallow Redux

So the last 2 posts I made really don't sit well with me because I am a perfectionist. There is a learning curve when working with pigskin. Its like tattooing rice pudding when it gets soft. Generally it has a firm texture, but fatty parts bleed through no matter how much you clean off the grime. That being said, I decided to redo the swallow with a fresh out of the freezer piece, it defrosted pretty rapidly, and I was ready with stencil in hand. I also got a tattoo ink kit, so I have several colors now. It made a huge difference when I added the red. So even though pigskin is an uphill battle, this time I feel it came out a lot better. I was unable to properly draw and render the bomb the way I wanted to because of the soft nature of the area. So all in all not too bad considering. Enjoy.

The Shader

Drop Dead Swallow

So here is my horrid Old School Swallow attempt. The flash is cool and I dig the concept, but the mushy pigskin threw a monkey wrench into my plans. Oh yeah and I picked a thicker needle by accident to line with cause I am a spaz. I will redo this it does not sit well with me. Blah.

Another Load of Carp

So my pigskin tattoo adventures continue...It comes in a large roll and I slice it into 5x5 or a bit larger. Vacuum sealing them and freezing them seems to be a good method of preserving them for use. This one I had defrosted in the fridge for 2 days, and I think it affected the quality of the piece unfortunately. It seems that the surface gets mushy and its difficult for the ink to hold so I did my best. The first piece I did was pretty fresh, so I will try to defrost them as they are needed not so much in advance. I was bummed and I know they will come out better. I hate to be the carpenter blaming his tools as they say, but it was really tough to work on. I think pretty soon I will be ready to do some on myself and some friends who are eager. This stuff is just too damn mushy. I know if I used the rubber skin stuff this would have had alot more tonal values in the image. I will post the picture and of the pencil sketch I did as reference. I am not totally happy with it but it is part of the learning curve I guess. I also did a Sailor Jerry inspired piece with a swallow. It came out ok..same deal with the mushy skin. I will definitely redo it. I didnt have red tattoo ink for that one so I used Higgins ink. Blah.