Biomech Tattoo and Carte Blanche.
What could be better than a client asking for a large project in one of my favourite styles? A client who gives me carte blanche!
There were some basic ideas, but apart from the size and general style I don’t remember any other limitations, although I’m writing this article almost four years after first meeting this client so my memory isn’t perfect.
Having carte blanche helps, especially when it comes to a biomech, or bio-organic if you prefer. In this somewhat abstract style, any limitation or imposition posed by the client tends to invalidate the final result and evidently this guy was aware of that.
Whatever it takes
Since this was a full torso tattoo, I needed to know something fundamental in order to develop the design. Should the nipples be avoided or not?
The choice may seem obvious but it’s not. Some people choose to avoid them for the pain but not him, he was determined to fully cover the chest, at all costs. Having clarified this point, all I had to do was go to the drawing board and create something I could be proud of.
Something Alien
The idea I started from was that of an alien skull at the center of the chest from which I would then develop the rest: a mixture of specular bone and organic structures. This allowed me to speed up things, having to draw only half of the drawing and above all maintaining the symmetry of the chest.
After a first elaboration I decided the design needed to be simplified, removing very thin structures that risked making the structure not very powerful and re-elaborating the middle area.
Finally, to make the drawing more dynamic, I changed the movement of the tentacles.
Besides, a living creature with tentacles would unlikely move them all in the same way.
Limited resistance
We were good to go, but the sessions, the first one in particular, were by no means simple.
The chest is already challenging enough to tattoo due to the continuous expansion and contraction caused by breathing, as also the area of the belly where, in addition to the raising and lowering of breathing there’s the pulsing of the aorta, to complete the picture this guy had a pretty low pain tolerance.
The chest is definitely one of the most painful areas to tattoo but in this case it resulted in excessive movements, tremors and involuntary contractions that made it difficult to tattoo precise lines. The first session was so challenging that half way through the outline I quickly blended the remaining half to fix the stencil, with the intention of carrying on in the following sessions using an anesthetic cream.
There are those who are against anesthetic creams regardless, but as far as I’m concerned, as long as it makes my work easier and the sessions more sustainable for the client, I don’t care if outside help is used.
A long wait
The following sessions proceeded in a more acceptable way for both of us, so much so that we also scheduled a couple of consecutive sessions to speed up the process, even if in several cases some sessions were moved several months apart, including the final session, that took place more than a year after the previous one, also due to lockdown and other inconveniences caused by Covid.
This last appointment was needed to do some touch-ups, increase contrasts and other small stuff.
I would love to take pictures of the completely healed tattoo, but since the client lives very far from my studio I decided to photograph the healed work before touch-ups, to avoid him making a long trip for just a few minutes of photographs and videos.
materials used for the design.
Faber-Castell Grip Plus 1.4: https://amzn.to/3OJIPQ2
Faber Castell 138471 0.7: https://amzn.to/3nonOPi
Staedtler, silver 0,9 mm: https://amzn.to/3nnSznC
Tombow Mono Zero – Gomma di precisione: https://amzn.to/3u50XMw
Tombow Mono Zero – Gomma a penna: https://amzn.to/3nndCXb QWORK
Gomma da cancellare elettrica: https://amzn.to/3u7iOCp
Below you can see the various stages of processing and a video of the work one year after the penultimate session.