May 2007 Archives

I went at this version of Peter Paul Rubens' Raising of the Cross. It's flipped horizontally and I threw in some touches of negative cross space and flow lines to try and smooth it into Dale's arm.

Outlining seemed impractical, so I did the whole tattoo with a 9 mag, black ink, and distilled water. When he gets back from traveling, I'd like to go back over this for about an hour to bring out some spots and detail the face a little more.

And once I bust out the Nikon, I'll make a point to take some better photos. I'd also like to post a few images of the prep for this piece.

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I got to go over a tattoo I did awhile back. I wasn't about to change it much, but I certainly wanted to enhance it. My 26th tattoo, I didn't know much about color mixing, so I tried to fade a light grey wash straight into pure yellow. The result was harsh and unbalanced. This time I went over it trying to blend in (as much as it would allow me to) different shades of the color.

Also I wasn't comfortable shading the banner before. I failed to treat it as an object, instead I shaded around the text, making sure to leave room for the lettering. This time all it took was running a light wash over the banner dimensionally. Then, I quickly increased the contrast in the drop shadow from the banner and added more shadow below the two petals above the word "Mom". It helped.

And finally, I still wasn't happy with the touch up. The flowers weren't coming out enough for me, so I stood back and squinted my eyes. It showed me that I needed more contrast towards the top. All it took was a few spots of black to light grey behind and between the petals to reveal a strong contrast.

Rachel came up with the idea to have the letter "e" in "hope" represent the ribbon for Breast Cancer Awareness. She tossed it around with a friend, and this is the drawing that was presented to me for her first tattoo...

I loved the idea and we talked about turning each letter into ribbons, with the "e" being a more obvious pink.

My first step was to turn on the light box and trace my ideas over the original drawing. This way the feeling and shape was present while I created distinct, flowing ideas on top of the letters. Over and over, I drew different shapes, bends, and ribbon contortions. When doing this, I have to always keep precision far away from my mind. The whole point is to quickly trust myself and figure out the flow. No idea, or question is bad because I'm brainstorming on paper.

Go over something fifteen times and it becomes obvious how you want it to form.

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Up next was taking pencil to paper and quickly rendering a sketch of lighting ideas. I didn't want anything realistic (i.e. a specific light source) but went for a style instead.

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Once complete, I made the outline by... (insert drum roll)... outlining the sketch. I used a Micron and made about six individual outlines. Every time I tried my best, and each outline had stronger points. I then scanned them and pulled out the good parts and pieced them together to form a more precise outline in Photoshop.

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I could have scanned the rendered sketch and outlined it in Adobe Illustrator, but I didn't really want it that precise. This inking method served the drawing fine.

Finally, I had a couple of color reservations, so I opened up Photoshop to get a better feel before I went into the skin. Using the final outline, I colored in and over with my Wacom and PS brushes. The actual colors were nowhere near exact, but they helped me to understand what was going on.

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I quickly saw the black outline to be harsh so I colorized it accordingly.

Once I was sitting in front of her right shoulder blade, I not only felt comfortable with this piece, but I was excited to finally get it out of my head and onto skin. Mixing the colors didn't take as long because mentally, I had gone over some of that process earlier on the computer.

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My college years of graphic design have ingrained the idea of multiple thumbnails. Every quick idea builds a stronger preface before approaching the final product. I know in the tattoo street shop environment, this presents a time problem: there's always a constraint, so too much time doesn't fit. But when worked on in my own time, I was able to flesh out a few pieces of the puzzle before getting close to her skin.

Six new photos with commentary have been posted in the Tattoos 51-70 Archive (Gallery). Just scroll down to see them at the bottom of the page. And I've begun a new section -Tattoos 71-90- by posting the dolphin from the previous post.

I've also a gallery up on the Bluebird Tattoo website. It's nothing that hasn't been posted here, but it's nice to be included as one of the artists.

Oh, and a link to the Allen Tattoo Deviant Art page is now on the sidebar. Come and drop in.

I'm finally starting to feel comfortable, even excited about outlining. The guys at the shop have told me time and again to trust myself and stop being chicken.

See, I've been slowly building up lines in a scratching sort of manner. My tendency has been to work the line incredibly lightly, then inch my way up and through it. The concept has made sense to me from the beginning. Tiny little movements within the thickness of the line working their way to form the shape.

What I've discovered is that outlining this way is fine. It's an effective technique that can used in many situations. But I also need to feel comfortable going from point A to point B. Dive those needles in like a plane landing, follow the stencil smoothly, then pull those needles out just as smooth: like a plane taking off. If I can build a steady hand, it'll pay off elsewhere throughout every tattoo.

Months ago, I wanted to blame my machine. The idea was to buy a really good machine off the bat and hope it would fix my timid lines. But I had to keep listening to those around me trying to help. So I've kept at it.

When I error, I error on the side of a line not being deep enough. Some of the healed tattoos have come in and certain lines are barely visible. It's great that I can just go back over them and the problem is solved, but my goal is to hit it right the first time.

Lately, I'm trusting myself more. I've much more to learn, but I can see progress. My left hand really does tell me vibration alterations, skin response and stretch resistance. That coupled with the learned knowledge of needle depth, has helped tremendously. Now with a more solid and steady outline, I can whip out a flash dolphin feeling good about the shape. This leaves me with little to no concern while going into the shading and coloring stages.

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We use Poser 7 occasionally in the shop to find great camera and lighting angles on the human form. Instead of bending around a hardwood manikin to look for figure positions, we're able to adjust a virtual body joint by joint.

So why not send over that 3D file from Poser and open it up with the new Photoshop. There are other ways to change and edit the textures on three dimensional forms, but what imaging tool is more powerful than Photoshop? If I can mess with the texture - even add some tattoos - and the program with lay it on the surface instantly, it could be a great visual reference tool.

After placing the default Male figure (G2 Simon) within Poser 7, I posed him around in a mid-walking position. I want to place an image on his right arm, so I tried to adjust the lighting accordingly. Once finished, it was a matter of exporting the figure -minus the ground- as a Wavefront.OBJ file (3D vector file) then closing Poser to free up memory.

In Photoshop CS3 Extended, I created a New Document with US Paper settings. (8.5x11, 300dpi) and created a new 3D Layer in it.

Layer > 3D Layers > New Layer from 3D File...

Clicking the drop down box next to "Files of type:", I selected an Alias|Wavefront (*.OBJ) file. Then, I opened the file Poser exported.

My workstation is an older dual processor Dell Precision with 2.5GB of RAM. I was worried it would take awhile to render, but Rendering all 82,000 polygons took about 45 seconds. It's way longer than working with a standard image, but still not that bad.

The figure is brought in as its own layer with whatever Texture attributes Poser gave to it.

To put a tattoo on the body, I just double clicked on the Body Texture. (In this case, the SimonBodyTex layer) Photoshop opens up the texture as a new image. Any addition or editing is applied onto the three dimensional shape as soon as the texture is saved.

"Hey, I think I've figured out what I want to get."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Do you think you could tattoo a brick wall on me?"
"Seriously?"
"Tell you what, if the texture is too much, you could do a tribal brick wall. That'd be great."

Seeing an artist (Guy Aitchison) at the top his game is inspiring. He's come so far, yet he's still open to learning and has created an environment to do so.

Then, spending time with an artist (Markus Lenhard) in the middle of developing his craft is just as inspirational. There was much to talk about as he continues to build his skill set, name, and clientèle. He's even preparing to begin a new chapter by opening up his own shop, Lux Altera.

So how could I best absorb and retain the abundance of experience presented in front of me? Honestly, I don't think it's possible. I kept going back to my grandpa asking me how I could eat an elephant. Nobody would expect me to eat the whole thing in one sitting; that's crazy talk. But if I were to pace myself and realize I'm going to be at for a long time, I could go about my business: one bite at a time.

The first night was watching Guy and Markus go back and forth tattooing. It was a matter of standing over their shoulders and being present. I didn't ask too many questions, because I didn't know them and didn't want to intrude. But, thankfully, I let unfamiliarity and awkwardness disappear. With art being created at such an elevated level, I had to ask at least a few questions. Of which they seemed more than happen to answer.

The second day was Markus and I working on a tattoo for my leg. Well, he did all the tattoo related work, and I hung out and took the pain. (who knew under the knee hurt like that?) We're both inquisitive people and we each happen to have a child of near age, so our conversations were fun. I found myself watching then resting. (Sigur Rós will put you to sleep) I'd ask about, say, blending and Markus would respond. He'd offer wonderful information and I did my best to remember.

I've been messing around with Adobe Photoshop's latest CS3. There are some new, powerful tools and I can't wait to dive in deeper.

For now here's a quick little something:

Four individual images

After taking four shots of my new tattoo, I've pulled up all of them and placed each one into the same new document. Then I selected all of the layers and chose CS3's new Auto-Align function:
(Edit > Auto-Align Layers)

Great for panoramic photography, I wanted to see how it would work piecing together a tattoo on a three dimensional service.

For Projection I left it on "Auto". I'm curious to try out different setting. But for now here goes.

After Auto-Align

Photoshop does its best to find the median amongst all of what you throw at it. Then it aligns them by skewing, resizing, and piecing everything together. After viewing the results, I checked each layer and moved them around to fit the placement a bit more precisely.

Now, I selected all of the layers again and used CS3's new Auto-Blend mode. (Edit > Auto-Blend Layers).

After Auto-Blend

Finally, I just cropped the final blend and here you have it:

There are some tiny mishaps, and color balance is uncomfortable in some places. I'm sure if I went back in and tweaked around, this whole thing could be close to pristine. Also, viewing a tattoo like this (flattened and two dimensional) feels a little odd (the piece was created to be viewed three dimensionally), but the prospects are interesting.

It seems I'm no longer an apprentice.

That's right. You're looking at a bona fide professional tattooer.

The news probably doesn't affect you, but for me - today was a completely different day. It was my first day to jump into shop rotation. So congrats all around (not sure who to, but surely some for me) and Happy Cinco de Mayo!

This is an ongoing learning process, and I have yet to even scratch the surface. So nothing will really change here at Allen Tattoo. But maybe I'll get away with less showers. Oh, and I might just take up swearing.

¡Qué pachuco!

Rest stops, coffee, NPR, and audiobooks... I write this after returning from a six hour drive.

I fired off an email asking Markus Lenhard when he'd be in the States so I could get a tattoo. Oddly enough, he responded, "next week." A few exchanges and I was off to have Markus tattoo me at Hyperspace Studios in southern Illinois. A couple of emails later and I was graciously invited to come early and watch a bit of Markus and Guy Aitchison working on a collaboration.

Overwhelmed at first, I tried hard to step in with my mind open and eyes attentive. Watching Guy, Michele, and Markus tattoo was unbelievable. But being able to talk, listen, and be surrounded by a gifted group of people was an honor.

Here's my new tattoo by Markus Lenhard. It's near complete, with only an hour or so for the next session.

The experience is slowly settling in. I've much to think about; so I promise to dive into much more detail after I get some rest.

Copper frame, patinaed, hand rolled coils (wrapped in embossed copper wraps), mosaic damascus yoke, with full copper hardware from Pulse. Top it off with a huge U.S. penny from the 1800's for the rear deck hold down... and you'll have my new shader by Junebug.

I'm excited about running this thing. I'll let you know how it purrs.