.....It's time for me to really get into shading practice. Shading and fill in. I have outlines. I know how to outline. But shading is a bit scary, so is fill-in. SO much can go wrong.
It took me 2 tries to get Sic-un's leg filled in. M's fill-in has pulled out, although her father says she had a compound fracture right where it is when she was wee-small that scarred heavily, but has since grown over/filled in. The skin was a bit... tough, I guess, to get through when I was tattooing, and it didn't really want to take ink right there. Still...Fill in can be intimidating as can shading.
But it still doesn't stop the need for practice, and let's face it... Citrus just doesn't cut it for shading/fill practice. You can, I have. But the texture of the citrus peel itself means bits of the peel get stuck in the center of the needles and causes severe clumping and just...
Ick.
So I need practice, and I can't subject someone to something I am unwilling to do, you know? Why would I 'practice' shading or fill-in on someone else? They'd only have to go get it redone or covered over and I'd just get a reputation as another 'scratcher'...
Don't want that.
Then the thinking portion of it began. What design? Where would it be? Easiest places for tattooing on yourself are the legs. I already did my ankle and although I see several other designs there, including more triangles, I don't want to do another on my ankle just yet.
Sic-un mentioned the thigh.
My thighs are good pieces of real estate on the body, they don't have a huge amount of nerve endings, and let's face it... I have a good pad there, right? Legs that carry around a 200 pound body tend to be large. I have large legs. I have large, square-ish shaped thighs. Good for artwork.
So I decided on the thigh.
What design? What design could I use that was 'me', something I'd want for the rest of my life, yet could be used for heavy shading practice and give me some fill in time?
Skull--nah. Feathers... oh ick, no. Birds, animals... symbols.. No, no... not another one. Not yet. Lizard? Very little shading there. Koi? Um... no, no shading, although LOTS of outlining, LOTS of fill-in....
Shading and fill....
Hey.
What about... a fan? Japanese design, hand fan.... there's shading, right? Let's check the 'net for some designs or flash...
Hm. Sad lack. Sad, sad lack... Well, that means it's not a 'usual' design. It's not the usual rose (I discarded that idea. I do not want a rose right now) or bird or skull or knife or/or/or....
It's not a common design. There aren't any fans out there I could find (in ink, on the 'net) that showed a lot of shading in the fan itself. Usually, the fan is either a counterpoint (in the hand of the geisha), or just a tablet for a floral design of some sort. I don't want to use the fan as a canvas to illustrate a flowering tree, for example. I want the skin to be the canvas for a tattoo of a fan, a complete fan, with shading. I want a tattoo that says 'This is a fan that just happens to have a shaded design", not "This is a shaded design that just happens to be sitting on a fan shape".
I decided on size.
I asked Sic-un about size one night while we were lying on the couch, just last week. He asked how big I was thinking... I told him give me a pen since he was closest to my pen bin.
This is the design I started with. I drew it upside down. I was resting head on the arm of the couch, legs stretched out. I pulled up my leg, started sketching.
Maple leaves. I was thinking the bright reds and oranges of Japanese maple leaves, with the dark bark of the tree itself. I love those reds and oranges, even though red and orange aren't my 'favorite' colors, or even colors I tend to move towards. But I love the reds and oranges on Japanese maple leaves.
The area it will cover is about 6 by 8 inches, so it's not a small tattoo... And leaf placement.... gotta get the sticks right....
everything has to match for dips and valleys...
I'm going to let you in on a bit of a secret....
I use the 'net extensively for my art creation. Not in a "I haven't had an original thought in my entire life" way, not "I'll take your art, change colors and call it MY art", but "Let's use this for the base, that's the 'look' I want, so let's take that off and then move it around and change it here and what to use for the design itself, let's go googling-googly-goo....
Pages upon pages of fans pulled up and looked at and discarded and pulled and checked and removed and added, not to mention Japanese maple leaves to be pulled up, decided upon and moved forward with... Please, though... I don't do copies. I don't 'trace', really... I do trace shapes off if it's ridiculous to not to.... Like the fan shape. I can either pull out the compass and the straight edge and rulers and measure and mark and erase and do it again and again and again (and I can! I have... it's not fun, it's not pretty, it's precise. It's engineering, really, and it's a pain in the ass) or I can find a fan shape I like from the 'net and play with it in photoshop and then trace it off THEN change it more on paper...
Which is what I ended up doing.
The fan I chose had a good number of sticks, was a good shade reference and had pleats the size I wanted. I played with the brightness/contrast, removed the majority of the black background which changed the edge of the piece since part of the design was black (it's rather apropos, really... one of my favorite images is Katsushika Hokusai's Kanagawa-oki-nami-ura, so I found a fan with the right pleats that just happened to have it on it), I had to assume part of the shape itself from the picture (funny crop on source), and actually take away most of the image while preserving the shading...
Then I transferred it to my pad (carbon...wonderful concept), trace out and straighten out EVERYTHING (one of the problems in taking away the black background is it DOES change the edges), lengthen the entire fan surface, decide where I wanted the visible stick to end at...
I liked it. I really liked it. Then I had to decide where I wanted to put the leaves, how many, where laying, how shaded, how attached, how does the branch go, where does it come from... Outline... how much to outline, decisions to made before actually inking for where outline would be... Do I outline the leaves, or use a colored outline or just fade from the background which ends in outline or/or/or.
Then colors, which is a whole new agonization (is that even a word???) in and of itself. Sic-un laughed at me when I asked him what color the background should be. "Babe, it's your leg. It's your tattoo. YOU decide."
ARRGH. I understand, really, but still... A direction would have been nice. So wracked the brain. Do I do a favorite color? Hm. Those are all dark, and you want the dark of the branch to stand out. Wait. What about... nah, that's almost as bad as... Well, it's not like, it DOES contrast... No, the color mixing would be a pain.. hm.
If I do the leaves and branch, let it heal, you'd have time to get some of that color in.. well, maybe. Hm.
I have approximately 200 colored pencils.
And I went back to the way I saw it in my head when I had that one dream...
Not the tattoo, the fan.
That was the dream fan. The color, design, the utter simplicity.
I think I can work in the shading not only through the design in the leaves but also the fabric of the fan itself. If I can't, then I can't, but I'm not subjecting some victim to it. I'll try it on myself. And hey... what do you know... I'm thinking I can mix a tad Zulu Green with a greater quantity of Sky Blue and maybe get a good shade of teal. And if I can't, well, then, we'll just let it heal and cover it in straight blue.
But I'm gonna try it. It's at the very least outlined hopefully Wednesday/Thursday or Saturday. I've got all the colors, I've got some needles, I have the time...
