Waterfall with "CRC"

The client already had made a sun design with the rays forming the initials of one of his kids, a tree with another of his kids' initials carved into it, and a gravestone of his late mother. What I added was the waterfall, including the initials of another child. I didn't even realize how huge this piece was until someone commented on the size. No wonder it took me so much longer than expected!

 

The art styles were originally going to match perfectly, but I couldn't help myself in making it a little more detailed. I do think, however, that when it's all healed up, it will look much more like the pieces go together.

Blue and Purple Stars

These stars represent late siblings of the client. She originally wanted stars with solid colors, but I suggested mixing tones a bit and she said, "It's good that you can read my mind! Even though I hadn't thought it yet."

Toetoo

How fun! This lady was real cute, and said it was about time she do something outrageous. What I did to test her reflexes was put three small dots near where the design was to be to see if she would flinch--since the design was only to be lines--but she didn't move at all. Very cute and nearly the smallest I've done.

A few additions

These photos have a few issues (not being in focus and having mucho blood), but they are tattoos done while manning the shop by myself this week. Fun stuff, but very different when you need to stop what you're doing to answer the phone so often!

"do good be good"

She said this was an impulsive tattoo. The handwriting it my own, blown up with a copy machine. She also liked the stars when I sketched up a few types I had in my head.

Yoshitaka Amano Illustration

Please forgive the Italics. Blogger wouldn't let me disable it and I don't feel like restarting the post.

For the longest time, I have wanted to do a tattoo of a Final Fantasy character. Yoshitaka Amano is an artist who has been comissioned to do various illustrations for Final Fantasy games, and his art always made me feel connected to the characters in ways the games never did. It's like a suppliment to an already awesome thing. Well, as an alternative to doing an 8-bit character (I was considering Edgar or Shadow for a while), I chose this beautiful painting of Cloud Strife and Red XIII from Final Fantasy VII. the lines are intentionally sketchy, as I was trying to imitate his style as closely as I could.

I'm very happy with it. I was originally thinking of putting more of the background in, but I kind of like it this way.

Wristband of Skulls

This piece was done on a man who is, like I did, getting into teaching. He has way more guts than me, as I am afraid of confining myself to a career of long-sleeve shirts. He, however, is doing this before he's even been interviewed for a job. He'll do awesome, though.

"Live to Ride"

Man, this guy sure had stories about motorcycle accidents. He was fun to talk to and spends most of each year professionally racing on huge bike tracks. This is his right arm; the left will have "Ride to Live" on it some day.

Jennifer Cover-up

This is a cover-up from an ex-wife's name on a man's arm. It didn't work out, so it needed to be fixed.

The man was told by another shop that he would have to turn the shape into a huge black mark somehow in order to hide what was originally there. I told him I could do a few more things than that and he was hooked. He knew he wanted an exclamation mark, so I created one out of broken glass. You can still see "Jennifer" if you look carefully, but if you weren't aware of it being there, you'd probably not notice it at all.

I actually forgot to take a before picture so here's the highlight.

Apple

A pretty cool story to go with this one. The client took this image from the albums created for The Beatles, but turned from green to orange. The reason she changed the color was to symbolize a family member of hers whom was a model for a character on Snow White with Walt Disney. Pretty awesome story.

The details were difficult, but I like the effect when it has. The guys told me this would take 3-4 hours, but the client was only there for 2 total.

Wow... the Christmas season is awful for tattoos apparently. I hope that after people are spending money on others, they are once again able to go back to the art of bodily expression. This girl came to the shop, obviously, but things have been slower since about Thanksgiving.