My newerest Tattoo

My new tattoo

(In the making)

-An ongoing blog on my design process for another full sleeve tattoo –

I have about half the money saved for another sleeve tattoo, so I better start with the torture of pinning down a design. I have a few ideas, and will slowly build them up and filter them over the remaining time required to save the balance of the costs. My regular tattooist also has a 6-12 month waiting list as well, so I need to pull my proverbial finger out.

POP

My first and current idea, well I lie, my biggest idea for the next sleeve is a stain glass style montage of things important to me. Done in colour, overlapping each other, and stylised in a Romanesque style popular in the 1100s. I also like the idea of adding photorealistic images amongst this cruder simplistic art, together with some silhouettes for contrast. A real mishmash, but on a large proportion scale so as not to get crowded and lost. With that in mind, I need a list:

• Tea in a teacup – just love tea

• My dogs and cats footprints – important to me and a preserver of my sanity

• My daughter’s thumb prints – personal, but not as easy to screw up as faces

• A spanner or other tool – to represent my mechanical mind

• A magnifying glass – to represent my thirst for inquiry

•
Weather – clouds probably, as they always make me stop and refocus the scale of life

• My wife: would be omitted as I think it is bad luck to tattoo partners on yourself

• A dice – some of the fondest memories I have involve dice, and it represents fate

• Words – now that is a blog in itself. How do you choose some words? A poem, quote, passage..

• Death – it scares me so that I would have to represent it, as a therapy

• A robot – come on, who doesn’t love robots! A 1950s one I think.

• Time – my greatest ridiculer. An old watch or clock face, maybe my 1943 Mickey Mouse pocket watch.

• A seagull – love ‘em. Not the best bird, but the most stubborn.

• A biscuit – Damn them and their devilish appeal. Also represents temptation.

• Swirling leaves – that magical mini whirlwind dance you get in autumn in corners, would fit around the elbow where tattoos do not take.

• A yellow post it note – just thought of it, but shows my futile attempts at organization

I will add more as I think of them. Any ideas?

My left arm gets cold every night as the rest of my body hates it and exiles it beyond the covers as I sleep. Maybe a shiny new wrapper would gain it some favour and allow me me wake up without a half frozen limb.

The apparent eclectic design of this shiny wrapper would also lend itself to having it done over time, and never looking incomplete. My other sleeve was done as a whole, and always needed to be finished. This one could be abandoned if funds ran out, or be inked by different artists.

Another idea I had for a while was a totem pole. The whole arm divided up into 4 heads that wrap completely around the arm, stacked up one on top of the other. Simple and striking. Now I type that it seems more appealing than I remember it being. Mmmmmm....

Edit: I will be getting something to represent my wife. Honest. Now please put that down and let me have the remote control back dear...please?