I was recently hired to design a whole sleeve tattoo for Mr. Gray. He had some ideas of what he wanted. He liked some work I had done in the past and left it up to me as to what style and how it would be laid out. So I sketched out the individual components for the tattoo artist to ink into the skin as well as the whole arm composition as reference.
Here are my drawings for it. Make sure you click the link so you can read and look at the whole thing.
First, he wanted the Roman numeral '7' with two roses on each side:
Then he wanted a sun for the shoulder area. I didn't want to do a "normal" sun. I wanted something that looked masculine and uncommon. I based it on a Thai sun design I saw on some armor:
He also wanted an angel in there. I wanted an angel with halo, wings that was pretty but peaceful in not a completely serene way:
He also wanted a compass. I spent less time with this one because I was running out of time based on his budget. I figured he could find a pretty standard image of a compass somewhere. I was just going for a general style for him to refer to. He ended up really liking this piece too though. So that was cool:
Next he wanted the king of spades, queen of diamonds and 5 of hearts. I figured that he could have gotten these images anywhere as well... so I ought to add my own little style and flair to it. So I loosened them up a bit:
I did two more '7's to throw in there somewhere if he wanted. He wanted a little hip hop style in there somehow, so I did the '7's in different graffiti style lettering. I forgot to take a picture of the other one. Here's one:
Lastly, he wanted "Loyalty" written somewhere in there. I have always liked the "Latin" style cursive seen in a lot of tattoos. So I did my own take on that as well. It sucks because when I presented my drawings to Mr. Gray, I set this drawing on top of some paint that one of my students had left out. arggghhh! So, that's what that big black blotch is- not for artistic flair:
Here are the two sketches I did of how the drawings could flow together in a whole left arm sleeve:
These were the first designs that I've ever done specifically for tattoos. I definitely enjoyed it and would love to do some more in the future.