Lots of inking this week…
I finished up another tattoo, this one a simple art nouveau bee design in black and white:

And I finally squeezed in some time to make more progress on my mechanical octopus. I’m going to add a bit more into the background, a few more pipes and more coral, but the inking on the octopus himself (or herself, who can tell?) at least is finished.

I’ve been getting a lot of commissions for tattoo designs lately, and I really enjoy them. Tattoo design is not something I ever set out to do, but I think my style works for it, and I really love the ideas my clients come to me with!

The latest design that I finished was for a chest piece. The client requested a pair of branches with cherry blossoms. On one of the branches would be a birdcage with an open door, and on the other branch would would be a bluebird that was partly mechanical, with a clock key in its back.

These are the three sets of concept sketches that I drew for the design.

 I always like to try to guess which sketch my clients will pick. (They say your client will always pick the one you hate…so my solution is to NEVER hand over a sketch I hate) and in this case it wasn’t the one I expected – it was the one where I thought I was deviating a little from the brief and going a little wild in designing the branches. I’ll do that sometimes – I always turn in an adequate number of concepts that stick to the requested design. But if I get an inspiration for something that veers off in a slightly different direction but looks really awesome, it doesn’t hurt to sketch it out. If the client or art director doesn’t like it, oh well. But they might love it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The next step was to a do a cleaned up sketch with clearer details.

There weren’t many revisions in this job. I offered a few choices of color palatte, a couple of different styles for the bars of the birdcage, and a couple of revisions were done on the mechanical parts that were added to be bird (which you don’t get to see progress of, since they weren’t done in neat stages, they were haphazardly laid on top of the sketch using tracing paper and Photoshop)

After the sketches were finished and apparoved, I scanned them, printed them in blue, and inked them. I do most of my inking traditionally with Microns because it’s faster than I can do digitally, but some of the bird’s mechanical parts and part of the birdcage was inked in Photoshop.

And finally, the full color piece, which you can check out a larger version of in my new tattoo art gallery:

A (very) belated birthday gift for my mom!

“If the cat comes, he’ll knock you off the fence with one jump and catch you with the next. Be still.” She was already at work with her sharp teeth, gnawing at the string.

From Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien

This lovely cover is from “Holmes Poems”, published in 1883 by
Houghton Mifflin. I found it cheap at a used bookstore in Auburn a few months ago, which justified purchasing it instead of a $250 fully illustrated collection of Byron’s poems. Sigh.

Besides being a poet of some note, Mr. Holmes was also a physician, a professor, coined the term “anaesthesia”, attempted to admit the first African-American and women students to Harvard Medical School while he was dean, and was the bearer of some very fine muttonchops.

If you happen to be in San Francisco, visit the Mission District in October and keep an eye out for posters and postcards for Marigold Project’s Dia de los Muertos events. I was chosen to design and illustrate the promotional materials for the occasion!

The theme of this year’s event is “Whispers of Death”, and I decided to do an illustration of a young woman in costume as La Calavera Catrina, whispering the stories and wisdom of our ancestors.

The main Dia de los Muertos event, a processional through the Mission District, starts at 24^th and Bryant streets and will end in Garfield Park at 24^th and Harrison for the Festival of Alters. So, if you’re in the area, come out on November 2^nd and support this local nonprofit! Activities begin at 7:00pm.

The Marigold Project is a nonprofit organization who, for 30 years has been dedicated to preserving, promoting, and sharing the traditional Meso-American rituals surrounding the Dia de los Muertos. And now they need your help! The city has raised permit fees and the organization is in a funding crisis. Visit their website at www.dayofthedeadsf.org to learn more and donate to their organization, because without the support of the community this amazing event cannot continue!

These lovely pieces are from a 1927 issue of National Geographic article entitled “Our Insect Friends and Foes and Spiders”, illustrated by Hashime Muryama.

This article was later reproduced in 1935 in a collection by the same name of insect stories and illustrations.

As much as I love scientific illustrations, they’re even better when they could stand alone as beautiful works of art!

Continuing my series of illustrations inspired by Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh!