This work has as its main theme some fundamental elements of the client’s life: his departed wife and her sense of justice, his children, represented by the zodiac signs engraved in the stone under the scorpion – which was already present and I reworked to make it consistent with the new elements – and among the skulls at the base of the design which include a lion and ram skull. That part of the design is loosely inspired by “Doomsday Clock”, uno dei miei lavori più riusciti.
In addition to this, his passion for heavy metal, particularly for the band Manowar.
Connoisseurs of the genre and the band will easily recognize the character who often appears on their album covers, here reworked while he is headbanging and playing the bass, instrument the client has been playing from a very young age.
Finally, his past as a tanker in the army, depicted by two tanks in the lower part of the composition, an area that I enriched with a couple of helicopters. That war scenario, the sea of skulls, the musician and the goddess of justice inspired the title of the piece borrowed from one of Megadeth‘s most famous songs, Symphony of Destruction.
The execution was relatively quick, also considering that the old tattoo (the scorpion) occupied a fairly large area.
Hadn’t it been for that scorpion I would have definitely set the composition in a different and more attractive way but this was the reality, so I had to use the available space as best as I could.
The choice of a graphic theme on the back of the arm was dictated by the need to fill that area without adding elements that could have weighed down the composition and instead create a pleasant transition between the hair of the goddess of justice and the external area under the scorpion where the engraved stone begins.
Apart from the limit imposed by the old tattoo, I didn’t encounter any difficulties during the process, which was particularly quick as black and grey pieces usually are, at least for me.
Finding the right size and placement for the bass player on the forearm to avoid it being too small or excessively deformed was a bit challenging, but other than that, everything else was pretty simple.
materials I 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 will find the stages of processing and the video of the tattoo one month after healing.
