Here it is, in its current incarnation - only 2+ more hours to go on shading around the waves
I waited almost a year for these appointments and spent a ton of money. It was totally worth it.
Step 1: Outline only, not even scales yet. Check out how the skin around is all raised on the black parts where the needle's been. The purple stuff is the ink the tattoo artist uses to transfer the deisgn onto thte skin. Sort of like transfer paper. My tattoo was done at Fat Ram's Pumpkin tattoo. (by Fat Ram himself- he's not fat at all, actually)
Another angle of the outlined piece
yet another shot of the outline. I think it's the angle I'm twisted at here but it looks like I am in dire need of a couple of sandwiches.
starting on the color ... those are red ink smears, not blood (mostly. There's probably a little blood in there.)
Close-up of the needle applying red ink. This is the color it is in real life.
Complete outlined fish with red fins. It hurt so much I cried.
You can see my eye makeup is kind of smeary. This picture is one of the few I retouched and the color of the fins is accurate, at least if your monitor settings are close to mine. A really dark rich red.
The final fish; getting this color was only sitting that was relatively easy for me. Color hurts less than outline, in my experience, but it varies from person to person.
a close-up (sort of) of the whole thing
A detail of the dragonfly that Ram retouched - I wish I'd thought to take a before shot. He did a gorgeous job on the smeary, fuzzy original. (Got back in the old days - before tattoos were legal.) By the time he got around to touching up dragonfly I was so tired from two consecutive nights of being tattooed I was hyperventilating by the end and needed some sugar. Everyone was very kind and pretended not to be annoyed when I showed them my blue fingers and fed me Tootsie Rolls. At least I didn't cry.
And here we are back at the start, with a slightly different angle.
Fat Ram's is also on myspace. I wouldn't hesitate for a second to recommend Ram's work or anyone in the shop - they are all terrific artists and, you know, nice. Because if someone is going to be inflicting pain on you for several hours (or even just one!) you want them to be nice, especially when you're whining about the self-inflicted pain. Darlene did Dave's feet.
Also, lots of people have been curious about how much it hurts. Again, your mileage may vary, but for me the pain is about equivalent to getting an eyebrow wax - so, it doesn't hurt that much, actually, tattoos are just hard because they go on for a lot longer than a waxing. (Sorry, boys, I don't have a good male experience equivalent.)
* actually, that's pure hyperbole, I know from my analytics program that there are NONES of you out there .... but on the internet no one has to know you're unpopular. It might help if I posted more than once a month, too.
1 comment:
Lovely. Post again when it's settled in, would you?
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