The client told me that he wanted a biomechanical. Full stop! For everything else I had carte blanche. I love this kind of client.
There were three old tattoos on his arm, two writings, one of which was in Chinese, and a series of 5 stars which, due to the poor quality and the contrast with the work we were about to do, I was happy to cover. Unfortunately, my client was unshakable, he wanted to keep those things and only allowed me to incorporate the Chinese writing on his forearm, without covering it though.
When at the end of the work he realized that those old tattoos were definitely “punching” with the rest of the arm and told me that I was right when I said that it would have been better to have them covered, it was a poor consolation. Who knows, maybe one day he will ask me to cover them.
I began working on it by drawing directly on the client’s skin who initially asked me, due to his fear of pain, to avoid the elbow, both on the inside and on the outside. It did not seem a good idea and I tried to explain to the client that having two empty “holes” in the composition would have ruined the final result but I can not force anyone to do something he doesn’t want to do, so I adapted myself and proceeded as requested.
The first sitting took about 5 hours between the drawing and the outline. After that, 4 more sittings followed and it was then, after finishing the black shading, that he realized that those “holes” on the inside and outside of his elbow were ruining the composition. So I had to invent something to fill them up. On the inside of the elbow I decided to put an eye, on the outside a mouth.
I repeatedly tried to convince the client to cover the 5 stars and writing on the inside of his arm but it was useless. Maybe I need to work on my persuasion skills.
Look at the images of the working process below.
