.... So I have my stencil done, I'm eating my muesli (organic soy milk, too), Sic-un's in the Alternate Dimension, and I'm going to get, at the very least, the outlining done.

One of my biggest time eaters with the tattooing is the stenciling process. I don't have a thermographic printer, can't afford one (I've seen them for as low as $700, and as high as $1700), so all stencils are drawn by hand. After completing the drawing, I pulled the first sheet off the master (we remember dittos... Kids today? Not so much), set it over the drawing and then traced it off. I used the ruler to keep the lines clean, so no worries there.

Then I took that first sheet and taped it back into position on the carbon layer to trace over it with ballpoint. Used the ruler there too.

Then you compare/contrast and decide which elements need to be transferred over to the skin and add/subtract as necessary. I am going to be transferring the fan's fold lines over. I'm hoping to get a 'guide', so to speak, for the shading I'll be attempting in the fan's background.

So I'm eating my muesli and contemplating ink. I want at least the outline done without any fuckups.

After meal.... then ink. More after that happens.

Oh, and if anyone wants to get me a Thermofax (tm), you're more than welcome to. It would make the process a smidge easier.

(photos are, in order, drawing, comparison and placement)










This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Saga of The Fan....

.....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...

To do more...

...would be to do too much, methinks.

"Symbols" 1/2009

This is a backpiece for someone who has some work on his back already. Across the shoulders, there's the chinese dragon, the aztec-appearing celtic sun, the little tribal and then the koi covering the shoulder. Down below, the tribal tramp stamp. That's what he called it. Really. The grey bits in the collage are faint prints of the existing work.
I saw his dragon and the sun and thought 'Aztec temple', so there's a temple. "And a tree!" Then I showed him the art of the PacNW. He wanted that added in too.

I know it doesn't look as he pictured it. I think what's blowing his twinkies is the amount of detail. A small part of me genuinely feels he was expecting a quick toss-off sketch. Instead, he got a (relatively) serious piece of work.

"I think of God and Death and Triangles..."*

Stencil is on and ready to go. Left ankle, crossing my leg up to the table from the chair. Yes, it's a blurry picture.









This is 1/3 of the way through the outline. I freely admit I didn't do as well as I may have if it wasn't on myself. There's a pain that you have to work through and ignore to get it done and get it in.







And the outline is finished.

Celtic Triangle - Ankle 5/2/2008

And the the fill-in for the bare spaces. My knotty triangle.
3rd tattoo completed, 2nd tattoo done in 1 sitting, 2nd personal tattoo. Canvas is canvas and nothing behaves like real skin.

Outline: 3L
Fill in: 8L

*A reporter once asked Dylan Thomas what he thought about. "I think of God and death and triangles," the Welshman replied. It was the title of my term paper in the 12th grade, 1988, for Mrs. Johnson's World Literature class.

We have machine!

My order came in today from Superior Tattoo. 3 springs, 2 armature bars, 5 #15 mags, 5 #13 mags, 5#14 rounds. The machine hums again. Triangle for me, cross for Sic_un. Pictures when I find batteries for the camera.

So THAT'S who she is.....

This woman has fascinated me since I first saw her picture 2 years ago.


Isn't she beautiful? She is defiant towards the camera, an early 'fuck you' to the mores and morals of society and 'normal' people. I finally found out who she is, thanks to The Vanishing Tattoo and their History of Tattooing pages.

She is Mrs. M. Stevens Wagner, and the picture was taken in 1907. So who is Mrs. M. Stevens Wagner? I don't know, but I bet she's related somehow to Charles Wagner, who was partnered with Samuel O'Reilly in the late 1800's in NYC (Bowery). Charles Wagner did something else, too...

Recognize it? It's a dual coil reciprocating engraver, a prototype of today's machine.

It's amazing what you learn when you surf the 'net, isn't it? Oh... A Google through various search terms provides us this: "Maud Wagner was the first well known woman tattoo artist in the United States. Maud was a circus aerialist and contortionist who learned to tattoo from her husband Gus. Her daughter Lovetta Wagner became a well known female artist as well despite having no tattoos herself."

Someone needs to get me this book, please. I would dearly appreciate it. I'll tattoo you for it! No... Seriously. 1-2 color piece no more than 2"x2". You provide the book and the canvas, I'll give you ink. Deal? Comment and we'll work out details.

****EDIT**** She is Maud Stevens Wagner. Wow. .... Just.... Wow.

It's small and blurry, but you get a better idea of what the color is supposed to look like. Fresh, it looks almost navy. Healing up, you can see it's actually closer to the color of the wall (indeed, brighter than).
It's finishing nicely, and I have only spotted 1 instance I would like to go back and correct. At the top of the "Y" shape, in the above picture it's the right leg of the Y top. Right where it comes to the point, it's not. I am not stressed about this because it is less than .. the distance between those 2 dots. Really. But I'd like to correct it.
She's ready for her 2nd, which I'm still playing with the design on.
And Sic_un is giving me my 2nd. It's celtic knotwork, not super detailed (he admits he prefers the simple). I'm thinking bicep. Outline, potential color?
It's closest in shape to this:
but reversed. I want the terminus at the top. ANYway. This reversed (and yes, I have the flash for it already), but let me throw some ideas to you:
Thin black outline, pale shading overs and dark unders (purple shades)
Thin dark purple outline, dark shading unders, everything else left alone.
Thicker purple outline, above shading options.
Thicker black outline above shading options.
Thicker dark outline, navy blue or perhaps a deep purple, no shading, just the outline.

I'm leaning to the latter. I'll have to play.

Fire

SB, one of the women I work with, wanted a tattoo. Specifically, the kanji for fire flipped and modded just a little is what she requested. It's the crest for her karate dojo, and she wanted it on her upper arm. She was a lot like I was when I first started looking into getting a tattoo. She has a fear of needles, and wasn't really sure she could tolerate getting a tattoo. She didn't decide color until she was here. I was nervous, she was nervous.

She tolerated this admirably well. So did I. And I am now officially a tattooist (accepted money for a tattoo), and I have officially broken the law.






This is the outline. You can see 2 small scratches right above where this is at. That was the dry run. The bluish circle going around the outline (you can see it very faintly) is the edge of the stencil.







Here's the finished product. It's Superior's Sky Blue, even though it looks vaguely black in the picture.






Here's the full-effect finish. And you can really see the scratches in this one. That's what she likened it to... cat scratches. I couldn't agree more.

Outline: 3L, 3/23/08
Fill: 14S, 3/23/08
Subject: SB/Fire

Fixed Fill In-Completion.

Here's what it looked like after I redid the top line. You can see the feathering in the already tattooed area and how absolutely icky it appears, correct? NOT the new black line, but the greyish looking area (dry skin, older ink). That's what I started with, pretty much all over.











But now... taDAAAAAA! This is FRESHLY done. You can see the lines where I put down another layer of color, so there isn't any question about where I touched it up.

A close up of the same area as the first picture, now fully done...

And the full finished after it's been sitting about 45 minutes or so in antibiotic ointment... it rehydrated the skin and darkened the ink all over.



Outline: 3L, 2/22/07
First Fill: 14S, 12/7/07
Final Fill: 14S, 3/19/2008

First Fill In

Finally filled in Sic_un's outline. I actually played around with it. Saw what fill in on real skin is like. Serious fill in. But I played and now I pay the price, or rather, Sic_un does. Touch up is needed. He's willing to accept some as 'first tattoo'. Other bits can be blamed on shitty lighting (architectural lamp and flo bulbs, here I come) as well as "He had alcohol". In other words, he bled like a stuck pig. Other is me being my artistic nature and testing things. How does the needle move, what if I do it X way instead of Y. Let's go through it bit by bit.




Here's what we started with,

























Here's right at the beginning,




















Here's after changing needles to the all-in-one prepackaged tube/needle (the disposable tube with separate needle wasn't working out too good for me), spilling my ink on the carpet, making him switch position twice, me attempting to get comfortable, not being able to see because of lighting issues and finally at the end just trying to get the bloody thing finished. We're going to dissect this one.













Let's take it from the top, shall we?
Fig. 1: I'm working in essential darkness, about 10 pm. And it's a case of do it or it won't get done and I feel bad enough having just an outline done. So I did it anyway. I know now I should have complained and set up better lighting. It's also a little awkward working around Sic_un's back. He had worked all day, his back's been funky 'cause of weather and minor little injuries to it, and he had to get comfy. He keeps telling me little circles, but that combined with bad lighting is what led to (Fig. 2) and (Fig. 3). I miss the middles and it gets spotty. Add to that the lighting which made my needle hard to see AND the disposable needle sold separately set up was giving me fits. The needle was resting right on the bottom of the tube. Ink was globbing up around the needle, even wehn moving in more-or-less a forward movement.
Fig 4, I started, every so little, working in longer sweeping forms instead of tight little circles. I have to know what it will and will not do. Up until this point, it's behaved quite a bit like a pen set up, so I decided to use a few pen techniques.



As you can see, they didn't quite work. This was right in the middle of the stressy bits, where I spilled my ink, threw a bit of a whine about how I didn't think I could do it and was gently eased into it more by Sic_un being patient and very understanding as I poked him with a needle. Repeatedly. It was at this point he started bleeding a bit more. Fig. 1 is me going back and forth and back and forth. Fig. 2 is more back and forth, trying to hit both sides. I switched to the different needle setup for 3.
Fig. 4 to the right impressed me. I impressed myself with it, rather. I wanted it good because the line to the left had been completely missed the entire length. Still showing all the middle bits, so the back and forth isn't working. Fig. 5 I started slowing down, we got a lamp set up for more light in a better place and I started TRYING to do small circles, slow it down a bit.




My hand got away from me. I was constantly telling myself "Slow down." I would even say it out loud to myself. Not because I wanted to rush it, but it feels so comfortable, I'm killing the tattoo bit of it because I thought of it and still think of it as moving the same way as a pen. But better, even if not by much. More moving back and forth instead of in circles. Fig. 1 was another 'A-ha!' moment, but the teeth (Fig. 2) were a pain in the ass. It was right around here that Sic_un started repeatedly telling me he shouldn't have picked or let me do such an obnoxious design as a first tattoo. I say it's a learning experience. Figure 3, you can really see the blood. That's not ink popping up, kids, that's blood.

Figure 4 pleased me, 5 not so much. But I was done and it's not not-fixable. It just has to heal.


So what have we learned with the first fill in?

I really want to try magnum needles, actually. That's one of the things I've learned. There has to be a better way than a standard 14 round fill in. I know Sic_un did it that way (14rounds), and the mags weren't that widespread when he was tattooing, but... BUT. I'd like to try them for big fill ins. They make more sense to me in the needle pattern, actually.
Better lighting is a MUST. No excuses. The problem appears that it will be a case of me avoiding the halogen option because that's what's out there for architectural lamp choices. I'll find something that will take a bright florescent bulb. I want as little heat while tattooing as I can get away with.
NO ALCOHOL. Dammit.
Better set up. Can't do it in the bedroom. Won't, not anymore. Comfort be damned. We'll take breaks. I won't do it on the bed any more. Part of the reason ink got on the carpet is the lack of space where I was doing it at.
Powdered gloves. The kit came with ohsofashionista black gloves. Not powdered, at least, not enough powder if any. Made working with/in them a bitch. I wouldn't mind a slightly smaller glove. Part of the problem is my hand-size. I have wide, short hands.

So. Critique if you wish. I've moderated comments to keep down on the 'You suck' and 'You're wonderful' stuff. Critique, not insult, not pander. Your words will remain yours.