Something new...

This is my first attempt at a large tribal style piece. Ok, I will amend that - this is my first tribal piece ever! I paired up with another artist, she henna'ed the lady while I did this piece for her partner. We pulled our source images from the web since we are both new at this kind of design.

We had fairly short notice to put this all together which meant little time to practice! I had spent a few hours going over how the design was put together, and I made some adjustments here and there. But beyond that we opted to use transfer paper to lay out the design on the clients. Despite using the thinnest tracing paper I have there are still some issues with laying a flat design on the human body (after all, we are not flat). I have to wonder how tattoo artists do this and if there is some trick to the trade that would reduce the smudging. I guess I shall just have to ask around. Of course I could experiment on myself so long as I don't plan on showing any skin any time soon...

The appointment was a lot of fun and the clients were clearly enjoying themselves. This picture was taken with the paste on and getting rather flakey so it is not as clear as I would like. I am hoping the clients send us pictures of the developed stain as I am super curious to see how it turns out!