Mirror of the times.
When doing a full sleeve it would be advisable to plan the project as a whole, breaking it down into distinct steps often leads to a qualitatively inferior result. The gap between the first step and the following ones is perceptible and risks of compromising the harmony of the entire piece.
But sometimes the client hasn’t even decided to get a full sleeve, so it’s necessary to proceed on a case-by-case basis trying to achieve the best result possible with the project at hand.
In this case, however, the client had already planned to tattoo his entire arm and, more or less, also the themes to be developed, unfortunately he didn’t want to listen to my advice and no one can force a person to act in one way or another.
The end result isn’t bad, but better planning would certainly have produced something more cohesive and harmonious.
The first subject was tattooed on the forearm and given the theme and especially the period in which the tattoo was done, I called it Coronavirus.
A little over a year went by before moving on to the second subject:
a mad scientist holding a puppet with pins in one hand, like a voodoo doll, while he is about to hit him with a huge syringe that he holds in the other hand and above him the words “Antisocial”.
I found the theme very interesting and the idea of using a caricature style excited me even more.
The client didn’t give himself over to describing its meanings, for my personal interpretation I redirect you to the video accompanying this article.
To complete the sleeve he asked me to use part of a drawing I already made and which was in search of an owner, something in black and grey that looks kind of deformed and demonic.
So starting from the forearm we have a sort of alien cell multiplication, moving up we find a mad scientist playing with syringes surrounded by a sort of demonic energy. Isn’t this a glimpse, even if ironic, of the times we are living in?
Two distinct projects
The process was simple and relatively quick. If we include the forearm time increases, but it falls within the average for the creation of a colour sleeve.
In several respects the tattoos of this sleeve have similar roots, at least for what concerns the meanings, and it would have been preferable to design them in concert to obtain a better and more harmonious result, but although I continue to see them as two distinct projects, I find that as a whole they still complement each other in an interesting way.
materials I used for the design
Pentel – Fude – Penna con punta a pennello: https://amzn.to/3Oa4XT0
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 stages of processing, videos of the mad scientist’s drawing and the tattoo one month after healing.
