This guy came to me with pretty clear ideas. He wanted a marine theme.
Right now I don’t exactly remember if the seahorse was already in his plans but I seem to remember that both the sea turtle and the dolphin were. Hard to say, since the discussion of the project took place in February 2016.
Anyway, after discussing the project all the elements to be inserted were clear: dolphin, horizon at sunset, sea turtle, seahorse, compass, coral reef and possibly a treasure chest which, however, was discarded because it would have ended up being huge in proportion to the seahorse.
The only question was how to cover the lettering on his inner arm.
While I was drawing, I came up with an idea that I consider a stroke of genius and that gives the piece its title, adding some nautical mines.
The idea, a bit nihilistic, is that in this pristine water paradise, like on the entire planet, human intervention often destroys or otherwise puts life at serious risk.
He liked the idea so I proceeded.
I was more than satisfied with the design and I couldn’t wait to start this project that I knew would have required a lot of time, both for the amount of elements and because the sessions would have taken place every two months each.
The day to start tattooing finally arrived but I was in for a big surprise.
The stencil didn’t work, it was completely out of proportion and I couldn’t figure out why as I have always been rigorous in taking measurements. Shortly after I realized that the client had lost a huge amount of weight since our first meeting, maybe even 20 kg!!!
So I basically had to reconfigure the entire stencil with these measurements and it took a large amount of time.
So guys, if you are planning on decreasing or increasing your body mass, I always suggest you do it before getting a tattoo, especially if it’s a big project.
Unfortunately, in order to preserve the design without having to do a new one, the space between the seahorse and the turtle increased a lot, so I added some jellyfish.
The dolphin wrapped the shoulder but some downsizing of both the dolphin and the graphics that close the shoulder was still necessary, as well as the turtle, which with the previous dimensions would have ended up overlapping itself.
Once fixed, we got things going and started this project that took a large amount of time, both for the distance between sessions and for a few mishaps, plus some sessions being postponed or canceled due to force majeure and finally because this client’s pain tolerance was limited to 3 hours, beyond which we have never been able to go.
But apart from these small hiccups I’m very satisfied with the work 🙂
Look at the pictures of the working process below.
