Artistic Process: Odds and Ends

Dragons and Ravens and Wolves... oh my!

a little sample of what I've been up to the last couple weeks

Enjoy!

Rouven, a client from Germany after flying in for his first visit.
One single dragon... a full sleeve which incorporates the chest and shoulder blade. A pain in the ass as the dragon not only has to double back on itself several time to get any knotwork, but it also has to taper at a constant rate for the entire length.

Frustrating start, I am very happy with the results... the groundwork is always the most important :-)

Round 2... a shorter visit as he had to catch a flight home, but the scales are in place and the head shaded now. 

The Fenris Wolf

A full leg sleeve+ on Per for his daughter. As opposed to Dragons which you can twist and turn to fit the required space a Wolf (despite being abstract) must retain a wolf form to be recognizable... which is rather limiting in creating a three dimensional piece covering the entire leg.

I stretched the Wolf as far as I could and then to fill the remaineder of the space added the god Tyr on the inner side of the calf. Here we have Tyr binding the Fenris Wolf with the chain Gleipnir represented by a serpent which Tyr is holding fast to in his remaining hand. To symbolize Tyr's loss of his hand I also have the Fenris Wolf  biting his own hind leg :-) .

Keefer's leg sleeve... using only 2 dragons. One up... one down

Round 2: finished the Honeycomb scales

Round 3: Staggered spade scales in place and almost filled... as well as knee and knee pit spirals

Started a smaller half sleeve project... 3 dragons intertwined  around a Thor's Hammer

Groundwork for a full sleeve  on another foreign client. Unfortunately we only got this far and couldn't have outlined it in time for his return trip :-( I love the mirrored double dragon heads on the forearm... a bracer that bites back.

We'll give this another shot in 2014

Phillip and Nicholai have been making the 4 hour round trip to get tattooed by me since they came of age. I finally got to tattoo their father last week. Their family name is Ravn, which means Raven in Danish... and that is exactly what he got :-)

For a little fun I hand poked the runes for his sons.

Finished up Nicholai's Latissimus Dorsi Raven and tied it into the previous Dragon half sleeve with some geometric dotwork.

 A little Triskele Dragon tattooed by hand  with runes spelling the name of her new born son. I have to do a Celtic Cross also by hand on her husband after New Year :-)

And a Coptic Cross from Ethiopia. The client actually owns this cross... although I did take a lot of artistic license with the design