Days Fifteen and Sixteen

Apologies for not updating yesterday but there wasn’t really much to talk about. The first two customers both cancelled and I was lacking in inspiration and everything I attempted to draw I was unhappy with so there was just a lot of sitting around really. I think the fact that Left 4 Dead 2 was out on the Xbox yesterday didn’t help my motivation either, because all I could think about was going home to play it!

Today I felt a lot more enthusiastic about drawing and did the following:

I have changed my roses again. The middle is more swirly now, and the outter petals are a different shape. I think they are a lot better than before. I am really pleased with the hare, and his big eye makes him very cute.

Next up was an owl with a clock in it’s tummy. I think this one has potential but I would like to redo this at some point.

I really miss using inks. As much as i like coloured pencils at the moment, I miss doing nice big bold black things in ink. I know I always say this, but perhaps in the week I will get round to doing some drawing and do a nice inked piece. Don’t bet on it though.

I have been so tired lately. I spent a lot of this afternoon yawning and almost fell asleep at the desk after I finished the owl picture. I think a nice evening of tv and Left 4 Dead 2 and an early night is in order.

Day Fourteen

The first customer today was getting a name tattooed on her foot. It only took about 10 minutes at the most so we had some spare time before the next appointment. Instead of being productive we wasted time on the internet. Oops! Pete was educating me about cars and which ones he wants to buy. We then decided to try out the night vision goggles that he got with his special edition of Modern Warfare 2.They are so cool! I didn’t realise they have a little screen inside of them, though I guess it makes sense. The only disappointment was the lack of “fweeeee” noise when you turn it on. We were a little bit gutted about that.

As I mentioned yesterday, I made a good luck flash sheet today:

I like elements of it. I’m really pleased with the rabbit’s foot in particular, especially the chain on it. I also love the hand with the crossed fingers. The shading on the girl went a little wrong though. I accidentally picked up the wrong shade of brown so it came out a little dark, and the black hair was a bad choice. I’m mostly pleased with it though.

After that I had some spare time so doodled some women’s faces from different angles:

The top one I love, but the other three I am so so about. The bottom one I am pleased with because I’ve had trouble drawing proper profiles to look good in the past, hence the 3/4 angles I tend to do. The hair I’m not happy with though. But oh well.

A guy who looked no older than 18 came in today. He said he’d tattooed his toes but needed them to be sorted out. He pulled his socks off and he had these horrible dodgy lines and some wonky nautical stars on his foot. They still had pen on them and they looked all scabbed up. We asked who did them and he said “Oh I got my own gun innit.” They looked so disgusting and his socks were filthy. It was an infection waiting to happen. We told him to wait til they heal and come back, but we’re definitely not going to waste any time fixing his mistakes. He also wanted to get “GREAT BRITAIN” tattooed on old english text wrapping around his neck.

Now I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t do a few bits myself at home before getting my apprenticeship. However I’d had a half decent amount of tattoos done on myself and knew the basics of keeping everything sanitary from observation and research. I am fully aware that it was a stupid thing to do, but I was safe and I didn’t just rush into it with no thought. I also got all the proper equiptment rather than buying a kit off of ebay. This guy didn’t have any other work as far as I could tell and it was obviously something he did completely on a whim, and expected us to be happy to sort it out for him? No thanks. I do think ebay should ban people from selling tattooing kits. I felt bad enough for this guy’s massacred feet, but when I think of all the people he will no doubt do the same to, it makes me feel so bad.

Day Thirteen

It’s quite funny how my thirteenth day at the studio happened to be Friday 13th as well. The day started out how you would expect. I was running late and walked to work in the pouring rain. Though once I was there everything got better. I decided that as it was a semi momentus day, I would do a Friday 13th themed flash sheet. After requesting inspiration from my facebook friends list, I came up with the following:

I kind of wanted to write “one for sorrow” with the magpie but couldn’t work out how to fit it in nicely so left it as it is. I am very fond of my little spilt salt pot, and the girl with the black cat. My script is definitely improving. I think my main problem is getting the swirls to look good. They’re still not quite right across the bottom. I think I may balance this sheet out by doing a good luck one tomorrow. With a girl holding a white cat in the middle and various things around her. We’ll see how it turns out. Any suggestions for good luck items are more than welcome in the comments.

The customers today were all regulars back to get more work done on big pieces. All three if them I had met before so it’s been nice seeing them all progress. I am particularly excited by a sleeve in progress. He has an appointment every friday and it’s been great seeing it all come together. Currently there’s a tiger, japanese demon, and a mask was added at the top of the sleeve today. It’s all really detailed and is looking so great. The customer is such a nice guy as well. He has a similar attitude to me when it comes to tattoos and doesn’t care so much for the meaning as long as he likes the design and is up for getting random things done. He has a tattoo of the cartoon charachter Peppa Pig on his wrist because his daughter wanted him to get it done. It’s very sweet. I sense a potential person to practise on once I get started.

Day Twelve

Sorry for the late post again. I will admit that it is purely due to me being lazy, as I bought a new XBOX game called Borderlands and spent all evening playing that instead of posting here. I am bad. The game is excellent though and I highly recommend it to anyone. It’s a nice mix of first person shooter and roleplaying game with a really cool graphics style.

More to the point though, I had a good day at the studio yesterday. It’s starting to feel more and more like home there. The first customer of the day wanted to get a halfsleeve of death. He got a design off the internet that incorporated death with tribal and tribal flames and a big halo of eyeballs and it was literally the worst thing I have ever seen. What makes it worse is that this man had actually paid £10 for the .jpg of it online. Pete decided to redraw something along the same lines but a lot better. He did a beast-like demon with big horns and some skulls and flames and then put some tribal flames at the bottom of it but conveniently ran out of time to outline the tribal by the end of the session so left it off. We are both hoping that he realises how much better it is without it and decides to leave it without tribal. He was so pleased with the redrawn design though and said he much preferred it.

The next customer was a really nice man who got a wolf and phoenix design on his arm. When filling out his consent form I was quite amused when I saw that he lives on Phoenix Drive. While he was getting tattooed I decided to have a go at some pin-ups.

As that picture is quite small you may want to click here to make it bigger.

Some are better than others but I’m particularly fond of the hula girl. Be sure not to miss the little crab perched on the beachball. I think perhaps I need to work on not giving all of my women the same face…

We had a relatively empty afternoon as someone had cancelled and we booked a girl to come in for a bow on her wrist but she never turned up. It’s amazing how many people book tattoos and just don’t show up. I can understand people who have to genuinely cancel but not showing up at all just wastes our time because we end up standing around for half an hour not able to do anything useful incase they show up.

Day Eleven

I always promise to post mid-week and it never seems to happen. I’d planned to do some drawing on Wednesday but ended up going to see the Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus at the cinema and really enjoyed it! It was strange but in a good way, and visually so exciting to watch. It’s also one of those films that you know will get better the more you watch it, and also with a bit more research into mythology. I think today’s drawing is slightly inspired by Lily Cole’s red hair

This was all done from my head with no reference except having looked through some lettering books earlier in the morning for tips. I would love to get really into script writing but it’s so tough to get perfect and I wouldn’t say mine in that picture is anywhere near pefect. However, all my practise has meant that my regular handwriting as changed from horrible scrawl to quite nice actually.

I planned on just outlining this piece and colouring it with inks tonight but i couldn’t wait that long and I think coloured pencils have made it a lot better than inks would have.

The most exciting part of today was turning up to see the new computer Pete’s had put in the studio. We have a 42″ screen wall mounted in the tattooing area and the computer has a built in blu-ray player so customers can watch movies if they’re getting long sessions done. It has Windows 7 installed on it so it was quite nice getting to try that out. They have finally updated MS Paint! It now has proper brush tools and everything! I also like the feature that allows you to have a virtual post-it note on your screen. I discovered this while Pete was out getting lunch so I made one saying “look! now you can cover your screen in notes instead of your desk! :P”

Also some exciting news for the future is that the shop next door is up for rent. Pete can’t afford to do anything right now and it’s completely pointless at the moment, but he was saying how much he would love to rent it as well. He would have the front as a big reception area then I could have it as my own place to tattoo, and because the two places are attached, people could come through to his room as well. This would stop people having to walk through the barbers at the front and it would be more like two seperate businesses. It’s nice to know he has long term plans for me though. Shame I wouldn’t be able to watch the big screen from and next building though…

Day Ten

Apologies for posting this a little late. I went out last night for halloween so didn’t have time to update.

Yesterday the main clients of the day were a couple both getting work done and they brought their son along. Only problem was that he had ADHD and sitting around watching someone get tattooed isn’t that exciting for most people as it is! He seemed fascinated by my drawing which was quite cute, and he was a lovely kid but he was so much hard work to keep entertained! After they left I felt like I needed a nap! The next customer never turned up so we headed off home a little early which was nice.

I drew a portrait of my favourite singer, Patrick Wolf. The original photo is from http://rebeccatakespictures.blogspot.com pictured below.

I did it all in coloured pencils and I think the shading is all really good, but the proportions are completely out. I think because I was working on such a small scale it made it harder to make it detailed especially in the face etc without making it bigger. That’ll teach me to work on such a detailed picture 10cm wide! I plan on redoing this full A4 size in the week.

Day Nine

Today was an interesting one. I turned up and Pete was in the downstairs room which has been a bit of a building site as they’re getting it fixed up. They’d taken down the bad plaster from the walls yesterday and found that underneath it was loads of old newspaper. I’m not talking about newspaper from the 1980’s, this was Victorian era! Two of the walls are covered in illustrations and there’s an illustrated songsheet from Wind in the Willows. We were trying to find a date and found one with a number ripped out but it says 18_9. That page was about Eastbourne churches and I recognised lots of the street names mentioned. Here are a couple of photos of the best bits:

Fascinating!

My main task of the day was to carve the shop pumpkin! It was a lot of fun and very messy. I decided to go with a skull design. I would’ve loved to spend all day doing some kind of intricate design but decided to keep it simple. I havn’t seen it lit up with a candle yet, I’m waiting until tomorrow for that. I have to say I’m a little bit gutted that we aren’t doing Halloween like they did last year. Pete was telling me how they decorated the whole shop with cobwebs and fulled the barber’s sinks with sweets and everyone dressed up. But the barber is away on holiday getting married so with only the two of us there tomorrow, and hardly any customers it would seem a bit of a waste. But there is always next year!

I didn’t do any actual drawing today which is a shame but I hope you’ve found all this interesting anyway.

Day Eight

Thismorning I decided to challenge myself a little bit by doing a portrait using no referece material whatsoever. I was really pleased with the design so I decided to colour it in but all I had to hand was coloured pencils. I fell out of love with coloured pencils once i started using inks, but today reminded me of why I used to love using them. I even did a big A2 self portrait in them as one of my GCSE coursework pieces.

Layering the colours and working over bits again and again builds up a really nice effect. I spent a few hours on this and love the results, though my scanner stole some of the colour brightness. I must try and get hold of some photo editing software so I can restore my drawings to how they look infront of you instead of slightly bleached out from the scanner.

The first customer today was getting some more work on a Marvel superhero themed leg piece. We got talking and he said he was interested in seeing my work so I showed him my portfolio and as soon as he opened it on the first page his eyes widened and he said “Wow!”. He seemed really impressed and said he would definitely be up for getting some work by me once I get started. I don’t think I’ll be short of people to practise on. A lot of my friends have said they’d love to get work done, and Pete said that he’s mentioned me to most of his customers and most of them have said they’ll happily offer me some space. I just hope I have enough people who will want the style of work I love and not just a million stars and names, though I know it is all good practise.

A man brought his daughter along today who was about 12 years old. She was saying how she loves watching Miami Ink and finds it all really fascinating and wanted to see it for real, so we let her watch her dad getting tattooed and she loved it! This weekend has been a bit of a eye opener to just how big tattooing has become and what a broad range of people (and ages) are into it.

Day Seven

The first customers today were 3 women in their 50’s who were friends. The first was getting her first tattoo (a tigger on her ankle) and she was so nervous that she hadn’t slept for days, but was so relieved when it got started and she realised that it really doesn’t hurt that much at all. I’ve never seen someone so happy with a tattoo in my life. She kept saying how beautiful it was and how it was exactly how she wanted it. It was really nice to see someone so happy. The second got a bow on her ankle with her grandchildren’s names on the two tails. She found it a lot more painful but has already booked in to get her second tattoo soon! The third already had a couple and got a rose on her wrist. They were all really lovely and walked away with massive smiles on their faces and told eachother how proud they were of eachother for going through with it and getting them done. It was heartwarming.

After all that lovely stuff I decided to even out the day by drawing lots of skulls. I’ve been drawing some more stylised ones and I really like how they look! First drawing of the day was Death.

Followed by just lots of little skulls I doodled. They’re so fun to draw!

Then finished with a skull with an arrow through it and some roses. No day of drawing is complete without roses. I think mine are improving each time.

Not much else to report from the afternoon, as I spent most of it drawing.

Day Six

Despite everything I said yesterday I was still lacking in motivation today. Though I blame being up all night coughing and generally this horribel cold I’ve had. Perhaps I should’ve had the weekend off to recover but I didn’t want to miss out or come across as not bothered by calling in sick so I stuck it out.

My first job of the day was to do a stencil for a customer coming in later in the day. He got a chinese dragon done. I quite enjoyed doing the stencil although my hand was cramping afterwards! Here it is. obviously not my drawing, I just did the stencil:

Next I set myself the task of doing some script writing. You can see how it improves as i do each line. It’s nice to be able to do something like this and see immediate improvement.

My name, my boyfriend’s name, some random words, and then thumbs up for anyone who recognises the last two as being together for a reason.

Ater deciding that reworking drawings is a good idea, i got quite into it and this is my third attempt as this one:

The only problem is that I can still see areas that vastly need improving (the wings and eye) but I am very pleased with the back of the eagle, as it looks quite simple but the curve and shape are really 3D. I had a tendancy to make feathers look really flat in the past. I will definitely give this at least one more try.

I would like to have done one more piece today but I was struggling to keep my eyes open from 2pm onwards. I managed to zone out loads and would look up and see a customer standing there looking at me and I’d have to be all “OH! HI! I didnt see you there!”. Oops.

We had an amusing customer come in thismorning looking to get some tribal he’d had done in thailand finished off and he seemed really up for it until we told him that it would be £50 an hour. Which is cheaper than most places in Eastbourne. His response? “I know a bloke down pevensey who’ll do it for £20 an hour.” Our response? “Go to him then.” I don’t understand how people can expect to get a decent tattoo for £20 an hour! And how a man who can afford to go on holiday to Thailand can’t afford £50 an hour tattooing?

Anyway, here is the rat drawing I did last week that I kept forgetting to scan in:

That’s it from me for today. I promise I will try to update during the week more often.