Celtic Cross Tattoo

 

I've  been wanting to draw a Celtic cross tattoo for a while now so tonight I mustered up the courage to give it a shot. First I used a compass and a ruler to mark out the shape of the cross. That was the easy bit.

At this point, I thought the 'industrial' look of the pencil guide lines looked pretty cool in and of themselves and that I might try another cross later that takes on this type of look, just for something a bit more original than the Celtic style cross.

I penned in the lines, freehand. I was pretty happy with my pen control for it. Only a few wobbles here and there. Then I began the Celtic knots in the cross. The first one (the biggest one) I tried to use a compass to help guide the shape of the lines, but I don't think it really helped. The knot doesn't "flow" like it should.

I drew the next Celtic knot free-hand, and once I was happy with it, I penned it in. Then I used tracing paper to copy the knot for the other 2 times. Then I did a similar thing with the knots in the circle as well.

 

And lastly, I filled in the black and shaded the knots. I started using the fine liner pen that I had used for the outline to fill in the black inside the knot where the pen looks slightly different, but the pen was scraping up the surface of the paper so I switched pens to use a more felt-tipped pen. Then I used a 2B pencil to fill in the circle, and shade the Celtic Knot work.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Although, now my back is killing me from being hunched over the page, drawing, for so long. I think I need to work on my posture while I'm drawing if I hope to ever make a career out of drawing or tattooing for long periods of time.

I'm on holidays now. So my goal is to do one drawing every day! (We'll see how that goes).

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Faith in Progress

Here's another go at the Faith tattoo that I started the other day. I decided to take photos as I went this time to show you the progress of how the drawing came together.

I started with a few lines to keep the letters a little more uniform. Then I drew the letter 'i' as it is in the middle of the word 'Faith' and also that it's the base for all the other letters to work from. Then I traced the 'i' and used the stencil to place the back line for the 'a' and for the bottom of the 't' so it would be evenly spaced.

Then I sketched in the body of the 'a' and found the right height of the 't'. Then using tracing paper, I copied the 't' to start the 'h' then had a few goes at drawing a curly line to cross the 't' and join onto the 'h'.

Then came the 'F'. I started with the body of the letter, and then sketched in the curly lines all around it. As you can see by the rubbed out lines, it took a few goes to get it the way I wanted. Then once I was happy with the formation, and the thickness of the lines, I attacked it with a fine line pen.

Again, I carefully drew around the outside of the entire word, rather than outlining each individual letter. This worked really well where my pencil work was clear, but was a bit more challenging in the areas that weren't as clear, more rushed and sketchy looking.

Lastly I shaded the top and bottom of each letter with a 2B pencil, blending it in and leaving the middle of each letter white to give it a shiny effect. I couldn't decide where to dot the 'i', so I left the dot out. Next time I would extend the cross of the 't' a bit more, to leave room for the dot above it.

Things for me to work on:

* more precise thickness of the lines in pencil work

* more precise pen work using a steadier hand

* curlier curls

Thanks for stopping by.

This post is pretty old! What am I doing with my life now? Check out www.thesummertimes.com.au