Collector Spotlight #3 Jeremy Servais's Lady Luck Piece

Took a bit to dig up the pics for this piece. I'm actually pretty lucky that I found what I did, since I've lost some pics along the way... I'll probably get a couple shots of the piece now that a year or so has gone by, but we'll do that later.

This Collector, Jeremy, is a longtime client and great friend of mine who has been a huge part of the Jade Monkey from the beginning. You could say the Monkey wouldn't be what it is and has been, without him.

So, this is his Lady Luck half sleeve. We did this in my garage, after I left Artistic. it was actually over this tattoo that I knew I had to open a shop of my own...

Anyway, The Design:

 Jeremey wanted a piece that would capture his interest in gambling and poker as well as include his Letterman Jacket and bear a similarity to his Wife.
whats shown is the final drawing design, and a pic of Jeremy's wife. we went thru quite a number of versions on this one, slowly dialing it in to the finished idea, I would have posted more of the previous sketches, but I cant find them...

Next is the outline of course... this took me quite a while, as I hadn't done this much detail in very many pieces before this. The hard part though was drawing out the stencil by hand. No Thermafax, no stencil printer. just spirit paper. but after that, the outline in the skin wasn't too bad. I was pretty scared though when doing this piece, hadn't done a pinup yet, and it was the most complicated piece I was doing in my garage at the time, so it was pretty intimidating at first.

After the outline, the only part I was worried about getting right was the face, and so I worked it as light as I could just to make sure that what I was doing would work. At this point though, one of the strongest aspects of the piece overall was the dice. For me, personally, The jacket was some of the most fun I I had with it, and the Dice...

 After working the foreground colors, and the tattoo had healed, we still had to go in and work out the background colors of the oversized poker chip with the skulls, and the smoke shading. Some of the stages of this tattoo took me two, three sessions. Just doing background coloring and shading took a few. That doesn't happen much anymore, more than three sessions for a given tattoo, unless it's something large and complicated, then I often tread carefully. I'd rather have to do more, than wish I didn't do too much.

 Then we end at the detailing, the most fun of this whole piece. which took two sessions, and a touch up. (sometimes I just don't want to let a piece go) Jeremy had come in to get a couple parts touched up, he expected to sit for 30 min or maybe an hour, and I spent more than two hours just doing fine touches. I just couldn't help it.

So there it is. Not on Sunday, but Monday... it seems easier on me that way, so I think thats how it'll go from now on.

Next Spotlight.... Who knows, maybe something more recent (I have to make sure I have all the pics for the piece...)