Alone at the Shope Again...kinda

I spent this weekend at the shop with Jay Dee. He's a very experiences artist and it was cool working with him. these are the pieces I did!

The guy had the tree in there already, along with the outlines of the birds and leaves. When I saw it and realized it would be my job to finish it, my first thought was that the tree would look like truffula trees from The Lorax! I changed the shape of the part I did and went ahead and made it look nice enough for my standards.

 Awesome way to put your kids on your skin. The concept was the lady's, using a couple sources. I got to work the hard into the center by request, filling in the rest of the knots as well. Very fun.

 This was hard. But cool.

Rose Addition

I was honest with her and I'll be honest with you: I had problems during this tattoo. It took the client's boyfriend suggesting it for me to realize that some of the issues I've been having with my ink setting right lately could largely be because I am using very cheap machines. It turned out great, and was free-handed with a Sharpie. Anyway, even though this took longer than I expected, here it is:

Before:

 After:

Covering up an Ex

This lady was a lot of fun to talk to and was very happy with how indiscernible the name of her ex-husband now is. I started out with a simple cover up in mind, but couldn't help myself from adding new color and dark lines to make it perfect.

Here is the tattoo before we got started:

Below is the after-product.

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.