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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