Portrait of Jane

I started an initial sketch of my beautiful wife tonight. I don't think I've done her justice in this one so I'll be starting the picture again next time. I think I'll need to get some 2B pencils because the HB just isn't working for me. It's too hard to get gentle tones and you can see all the scratch marks when I'm trying to get it dark.

In other news, Jane had her 19 week ultrasound scan today! I am happy to announce that we have a typically healthy looking baby on the way, who is growing at the right speed and likes to wriggle around a lot :)

Also, there are 4 more days until Movember. If you'd like to sponsor my mo, you can do so here. The Movember website is well worth checking out, as there are heaps of other cool things you can buy and do to support this worthy cause. I'll be adding a mo-growth-o-meter to the blog for the whole month... bet y'all can't wait for that!

Peace out.

It's mearly Movember!

In the spirit of Movember, I am offering free fingerstache tattoos for whoever would like one... eh hem... anyone?

No seriously tho... I am growing a moustache to support Movember, and you can show your support by donating here.


"Each year Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces in Australia and around the world, with the sole aim of raising vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and depression in men.

Money raised in Australia is shared equally between programs targeting prostate cancer and male depression. Funds are committed to our men’s health partners, the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue – the national depression initiative and the Movember Foundation. Together, the three channels work to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world class programs in the fields of research, education, support, and awareness"

For more information check out www.movember.com
Donate at my profile:  http://au.movember.com/mospace/220781/

Pop on his bike

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Portrait

I've started the next portrait, again of my Pop (because I couldn't decide which photograph to do, so I figured do both!) It's not finished, but I figured I'd show some of the process. Again, working from an old dark, poor quality print out of an old dark poor quality photo makes it a bit tricky when it comes to detail.

 

I'm thinking about drawing portraits on a pay what you want base, to help raise money for the Kane family who is raising support to work in Cambodia for 3 years with Interserve. You'll get the original drawing, and the option of having it appear on my blog or not.

If you are interested in commissioning a portrait, please let me know.

The portrait era begins

And now it's time to try drawing some portraits. I'd love to be able to do black and grey portraits really well, like Kat Von D. There are so many BAD portrait tattoos out there... I really hope I never add to them.

This is my Pop from when he was in a motorcycle club in his younger days. Drawn in HB pencil. I haven't finished the background yet as I'm not 100% set on that particular style of frame on the portrait. The old photograph proved to be tricky to catch the finer details of areas like the eyes. I will have to look into how to translate the tones of an old dark photograph into a better-balanced portrait.

I'm taking requests for portraits, if you have any loved ones or portraits that you would like to have drawn. If you want to email me the photo, or upload it onto a website and give me the link. I'll do my best!

More birds

So... I was getting ready for bed... and my pencils were just sitting there... and my sketch pad happened to be open at a new page... so I just thought I'd sketch a few original design ideas...

Mr Bluebird's on my shoulder

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It's Friday night, so I decided to finally pick up my pencils again and start drawing. I've been wanting to try the traditional-style bluebirds/swallows so I began looking the different ways to draw them. I sketched out all the ones in my tattoo mags and a couple of designs that could find online, but none looked as good as the ones my friend Bree has on her forearms. So I decided to start with that as a reference and copied one of them (hope she doesn't mind).

Then I drew up a few more designs based on that one but changed the wings, tail, shape and colours each time to try a few different styles, and develop my own style of drawing them...

 

They have come a long way since I started sketching them. But I've still got some more practicing to do before I can get the wings looking evenly spaced and more natural. I also have a few other perspectives to draw them. I plan on drawing a whole sheet that looks like they're snapshots of the same bird flying through the air... not this weekend tho.

Grapefruit Celtic Tattoos

I finished my school work last night, so I downloaded a few guides to tattooing . I got a bunch of e-books and videos with information from how to set up your machine; to hygiene and keeping everything sterile; to pen-work and script lettering; and tips and ideas to practice with. One video suggested practicing on a grapefruit so you get more experience tattooing on rounded contours (like the arms etc). So I initially did some free-hand practice on a lemon, because I generally don't have grapefruits in the fridge.

The lemon was too small to do anything decent, so I eventually went out and bought a few grapefruits to practice on. I decided to copy a few celtic designs, based on a 'Book of Kells' colouring book I bought in Trinity College, Dublin. Celtic designs will be great to practice on because they're full of wonderful outlines that have parallel lines and they weave in and out of eachother. I think If I can develop the control to do celtic work well, outlining anything else will be easy.

I chose the peacock and angel design, as they were well rounded and would make good space of the grapefruit. I sketched it out first, using a biro, and then began tattooing...

 

The outline work at the beginning was a bit shakey, and then it got pretty good - much straighter lines and I just felt like I had more control. But toward the end, I felt like it was getting really sloppy again. I guess I've just got to keep practicing and practicing and one day I'll feel comfortable with the machine in my hands. 

 

 

My next job is to figure out how to use the 'stencil transfer' paper so I don't have to draw things from scratch while I'm practicing. I will just be able to find a design I like, transfer it, and spend more time practicing actually using the machine.

The phoenix has risen

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...And the phoenix is completed. I was throwing around ideas for a colour scheme, and finally decided on going with blue/purple/gold because I thought it would make it look rather royal. Some phoenix pictures I've seen are green/red but they looked too much like parrots. I was thinking about doing red/orange/yellow all over, but decided that it would be too much of the same colour, and it would lose impact. It was a bit nerve racking putting pencil to paper, because I knew that once I'd started, I'd have to stick with those colours regardless of what it looked like. But in the end, I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

That's the last drawing from me for a little while (unless I'm really bad and procrastinate some more). I need to cut back on the drawing and get some real work done for school. Only got 5 weeks to wrap up all the assessment, report cards, student portfolios, etc. There's a lot of work to be done, and nothing will happen unless I lock up the coloured pencils!

Peace out!

Let there be fire!

And there was fire...

Rising from the Ashes

So the phoenix is shaded. I'll let the picture speak for itself tonight.

Phoenix

I started this phoenix tonight. I've been wanting to do one for a while, but it always seemed too much effort, so I've been putting it off.  I used a few different phoenix tattoos as references, and borrowed some ideas, but overall it's ended up being an original design of my own. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. 

The claws were the hardest part. I drew them like 50 times trying to get them to look right. I think I'm happy with the way they turned out. I think I'll need more practice drawing claws, because they were always where I got tricked up when drawing dragons too.

I've already done most of the shading for this phoenix, but I will post that one tomorrow when it's finished. I'm going to do it black and grey initially, and then might think about colouring it up afterward.

Oh by the way, if anyone who reads this blog ever sees a design they love enough to actually take to a tattoo shop to have done, go for it! I'd just ask you to let me know which design you're using, and also to tell the tattoo shop where you got the design from (Summertime Ink). Cheers!

Things are looking... rosey!

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So, this week I've copied a few rose tattoos, drawn a few of my own based on the other drawings and today I've drawn a few totally original roses my own. I used real photographs as a reference and designed these ones myself. All 3 are black and grey, although the shading hasn't come out really great in the photos.

This is the last of the roses for now (I promise). I think I've practiced roses enough for now... onto a new obsession tomorrow.

Check out some of my other drawings:

 

4 Drawings a day

 I was reading an article about tattooing that suggested that, when in training, you should do 4 drawings every day, and you should complete every drawing that you do.  So no more unfinished line drawings for me! That's my goal: 4 every day. Not sure if I will be able to sustain it while I'm working, but we'll see. Here's my 4 roses for today (I'm counting the bunch of 3 roses as 3 drawings, rather than one). I decided to try them without the black outlines for a change. They are 'original' designs, based on some of the more popular roses I did in the last post. I also tried the leaves in a different way.

Pick a Rose

I went through my Tattoo Revival magazine (Volume 22) last night and copied all the different styles of roses I could find in it. Some of the original designs did not have black outlines, but I decided to draw them with black outlines anyway because that's the style I'm practicing. Then I had a go at shading them in different ways. It's quite difficult to get a good balance between shading with good tonal contrast, and making the whole rose too dark.

Rose 1

 Rose 2

 Rose 3

 Rose 4

 Rose 5

 Rose 6

 Rose 7

 Roses 8 & 9

 Roses10 & 11

 Roses 12 & 13

Which one do you like the design of best? Which shading style?