This young lady had someone start a watercolor reproduction on her upper chest. I was charged with finishing/fixing what was already there and completing the reproduction. She created the painting herself and I transcribed it to her skin. Thanks guys!
Tattoo of outer space, inspired by images from the Hubble telescope. We did this much over two sessions for a total of about 5 hours so far. We still have one more session to continue the image around the inside of the arm.
Finished up the Candy Man tattoo today (Actor: Tony Todd). This is about 5″ tall on the ankle. Bottom of the horror portrait leg I have been working on for a while. It’s nice to have another one finished after so long. This piece is below Pinhead (Hellraiser) and Pumpkinhead on the left leg and finishes out the bottom edge. All I had to work from was a screen capture from the movie so we kept this one small enough to not look too blurry. You can barely see in the photo but his coat is turning into a honeycomb pattern. Maybe we’ll add some bees later to fill in some gaps up the leg.
I’ve been updating some links on my blog and I keep coming across images that I hadn’t posted here before (some may have been posted elsewhere before).
My version of Mark Ryden’s “Nurse Sue” painting. Took about 3 hours and is about 5 inches tall.
A patriotic re-post for the fourth! This is a photo of the healed tattoo I did about a year ago. I just realized it wasn’t in the gallery so I thought today was a good day to finally get it up here. Reproduction of the raising of the flag at Iwojima. The tattoo is actual size compared to the original photograph.
My rendition of Aesop’s ‘The Crow and the Pitcher’. I just realized that I neglected to post this picture. I guess I just overlooked it but I did this tattoo a few months ago. It is on the lower back and took about 3 hours to complete. I really like it a lot.
The glare on this photo fits the design (hehe). Cross with roses, wings and a crown. It’s always fun to do stonework (and black and grey in general really). We already have plans for the other side but we are going to fix a tattoo on his chest next.
I got to do several portraits (which I love doing) on Isais’ sleeve. He has some existing tattoos at the top of the arm but we covered a poorly done armband and added lots of freehand roses to go with portraits of some of his family around his forearm and the word ‘Family’ on his wrist. This is a healed photo of the part of the sleeve that we completed recently.
A new Aztec serpent to add to my collection, bwah ha ha. Isais has an existing Aztec piece on his upper left arm that he wanted me to continue onto his chest and possibly his back. This is what we got done in the first session.
People ask me all the time about tattooing over stretch marks and what happens to them…well, they puff up really big! (But then they go down and it goes back to normal)
I actually did this piece a in early 2011 (I think) and it’s about 3.5″ tall. He had a tiny home-made ankh on his forearm that he decided he wanted to have covered up/re-done. He wanted to make the ankh look like it was made of rough/crudely cut metal and look as if it were burning into the skin like a brand or hot metal embedded into the skin.I got to do some neat effects in such a little package complete with “skin irritation”. I forgot to get a before picture but I did snap a picture with just the marker sketch over the old tattoo and included it to illustrate a little more of the process from sketch to finished design.
I do a lot of freehand work which means I usually just do a few marker passes to work out some logistics and then clean things up with the actual tattoo needle(s).
I always appreciate the amount of faith that the clients have when we do these projects freehand so I make sure to go the extra mile to make the finished design exceed their expectations, if at all possible. Usually you can get a fairly good idea of how things will be when I get the marker sketch done, in the case of cover-ups like this one, the marker sketch covers the old tattoo so well that I know the final design will work great.
That’s a good goal for me when I do cover-up tattoos, to make the old tattoo disappear as much as possible with just a few clever design choices.