How about it? Welcome to another Collector Spotlight, this one featuring Jen's Cybernetic neck tattoo (if the title didn't clear that up). And though this piece still needs some fine tuning, and I cant find the most recent photos, (I think I lost them on my old flash drive, along with many other works... sad) But anyway. It's a really cool piece. It's been a great challenge and a wild concept! So on with it then!
The Concept: Jen Came to me with the idea of tattooing her neck with the Capricorn sea goat, and a cyborg/machine piece under torn skin. The images on the left are the initial drafts and from there I worked up the larger image on the right. This is one of the very first pieces I lined completely in grey. Though I was still working it as a lined piece, by that, I mean I was working out the piece in my head by the shapes and structure of the machinery in the design, and not considering light and shading first, or really including it into the greyline, like I did with the Sin City piece. Though I do go that direction for this tattoo, as you will see, that planning wasnt there in the outline... but then the stencil was all drawn in green marker...
And at this point. I had done a good amount of freehand stencils like this, but not quite this intricate, and definitely not on the neck, shoulder area. which I have to say is a tough spot to work. I've never been a fan of tattooing the throat area, the rest isn't a walk in the park, but it's not like the throat.
The marker drawing took almost 2 hours and was the easiest part of the whole thing.
The greyline didn't take nearly as long as the marker did, but that didn't make it easier. Jen sat great for this piece, really only having trouble on the throat and collarbone, but nothing that interfered with what I was doing.
I couldn't find all the stages photos of the shading, This did not all happen at once. first we did the sea goat, then in different sessions shaded blocks of areas, like the back, the side and the throat separately. it was the only way, considering sensitivity of the area, with difficulty of tattooing those areas, and that I was still figuring out how to do this technique in more complicated designs.
So like I had said, it's not done, we have one more overall touch up. These last pics aren't even of the most recent progress, with the skin tear shaded and such. as I was saying, after the different sections were finished, we then worked over the entire piece to smooth out any inconsistency and deepen the shading. As always, I prefer to work lighter because I can always make things darker. but you cant make things lighter in a tattoo.
So that's pretty much it on this one... it took about 6 hours to put this segment together as I've been taking care of my 5 month old daughter at the same time, feeding, changing, and entertaining her while I put this blog post together. really one of the few things I can do when I'm watching her,if I'm not trying to get it done quickly. While doing any real drawing or design work is pretty much impossible while watching her.
At least so far.
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