This piece complements, in an almost specular way, Persephone & Cerberus, done for the same client exactly 4 years ago. This client wanted to represent the opposite of the Underworld, so he thought of the goddess Hera, ruler of Mount Olympus, sister and wife of Zeus (Greek and Roman gods are pretty incestuous apparently 😀 ).
A personal sexy interpretation of the goddess. As for the Griffin, there isn’t actually any association between Hera and the Griffin, or at least I haven’t found any sources online, but the client still wanted to maintain an association between the goddess and a mythological creature so we took this artistic license 😀
The previous piece was completed in 4 sessions, while this second piece required 6, although it took less hours because the colour palette is reduced compared to “Persephone & Cerberus” and with time I obviously become faster. Despite this, we had to split the work into a higher number of sessions because his pain tolerance seemed definitely lower on this side of the body.
It can happen, it’s actually pretty common for one side of the body to be more sensitive than the other. Besides, it’s always a good idea to take a good night’s sleep and do a lot of exercise before a tattoo to facilitate the production of endorphins. Anyway, gritting his teeth and despite some delays, we finally managed to complete the piece.
It would have probably required less time in its original version, but at the last minute we decided to add the rocks and the griffin’s paw in order to make the composition more dynamic and to make it as specular as possible to the other side. The picture above and the video were taken during the last sitting. The piece has been perfectly healed for over 4 months now, with exception of the rocks, the griffin’s paw and a small extension of the sky to the right.
Look at the pictures of the working process below.
