A Special Ops tattoo

I'll be skimming over details, but I'd like to share a look into a recent tattoo:

The client wanted a relatively close version of this patch. My goal was to retain the look and make it a solid, more traditional style tattoo. Well, traditional takes me extra time to figure out because I'm still trying to figure that look out. It just doesn't come natural. So I scanned the patch and resized the skull in Photoshop

Then I printed it out. After printing, I threw it on a light box and traced my own version. Only drawing the parts I needed an overall shape for. The details I knew I'd mess with directly in Photoshop.

It's a back and forth process, so what was next? I scanned the new drawing and started to trace the shapes with paths in Photoshop. (I could have used Illustrator, but I didn't have to have every shape vectorized) Using a line weight of 11 pixels, I started building up the basic shapes. I would work on one side of the skull then flipped a copy of it for symmetry.

Having a solid outline wasn't enough. I needed to sample some color to ease my concern. So I created a folder within the Photoshop Layers Palette and used it to pull gradients of colors over selected areas. By setting my Blending mode to Multiply, the black outline comes through and the color makes sense.

Instead of CCC, he wanted FOB2. So I threw in the Sweet Rosie font with a slight arc.

Once we actually got to working on the tattoo, I knew every inch of the patch. And even felt like shading a little different in the beret. Nothing big really, but it felt great having confidence. Which, by the way, was about ten times greater (after spending time with the piece) than when I first took on the project.