Tattoo Design
Tattoo Design
This is a pencil drawing I am doing for a tattoo design. I will have it finished for the Stalls from the Crypt Halloween market. The event will take place on 20th Oct in Milton Keynes at the Craufurd Arms pub. There will be tattoo artists there and I intend to get them interested in my work. This will be a serious attempt to capture the style of Harry Clarke in my work. He does very high contrast, non photorealistic illustrations. Read ‘Tales of Mystery and Imagination’ – a compilation of works by writer Edgar Allen Poe – to see examples of Clarke’s illustrations.
Ink
I am also going to go over the pencil in ink. Its a good way to make the design more distinct and bring out the details. But the important thing is to photograph the image first. Photographing it will enable me to sell the pencil design as a print. There is also a risk that going it in ink will ruin it. Shading and tone are particularly hard to do with ink. Pencil enables you to vary the intensity of the light and shadow. However, with ink you have to do this by pressing the pen less hard. For the lighter areas, you go over them again and again, but only pressing gently. This allows you to create the illusion of less intense light.
Tone and shading
Another important thing on my list is to do more practice at painting with ink. I have tried to do this before. I did a pencil drawing of a cat and painted over it in black ink. However it did not have the high contrast i wanted. Next time I will try without doing and shading or tone at all.