Collector Spotlight #15 Marc Mendick's BoneGear

This weeks Collector Spotlight is a cool piece I started a while ago in my garage, while I was "between shops" And then we finished it in The 1st Jade Monkey. 

I really wish I had all the photos for this piece, most especially the marker drawings I did on Marc when we started this. We started this piece with a general concept: a BioMech shoulder cap, mixing machine and bone, and a bit of "let's see what happens". This is always a tough kind of project. too much freedom and I just don't know where to begin, too little though and there's almost no joy in a piece, the spontaneity is lost. Not the case here. we had a good direction and enough artistic freedom to put together something that would be well planned out (which is lost with too much freedom) and a flowing spontaneous design (which can be lost with too little freedom). The magic middle ground of design. unfortunately I have no pictures to show that first conceptual stage. 

Here we have shots of the shading. Building up values and contrast, the goal here was to establish what was in the foreground and background. Even though the distance of the two "grounds" isn't severe, we still want to show a dramatic difference in depth. 

Here we can see the details added. The green lights and white highlights to the bone. I was sure I had more photos of the progress of this piece, but this is what I've got. I wish I could show the many sessions in between these stages, as we gradually worked up the metal tones and bone elements. One of the biggest tricks of the piece was keeping each layer separate and distinct.

So this where it ends, so far. Marc wanted this piece left in a way where we could continue it further down his arm or up his shoulder. Whichever direction we need to go in the future. This piece is one of the first custom biomech designs I've done, and one of my all favorite pieces. I know it doesn't have that standard biomech look to it, and to me, that makes it so much more appealing. This piece won't seem trendy or derivative of another piece as time goes on.

A bit short, again. I just didn't have the pics I would prefer. I just recently started taking all of the staged out pics of my tattoo work and keeping them well organized for the Collector Spotlights and my personal records. 

I just figure that shouldn't stop me from showing these, my favorite pieces.