A Tattoo

I have to confess that tattoo's give me the willies especially the pictures that pop up when you look in google images.

The earliest evidence of tattoos has been found on Egyptian mummies dating back to 2000 BC. Modern tattoos are created by injecting indellible ink into the dermis layer of the skin but in the past they were created by rubbing material into open wounds or hand pricking the skin to introduce dyes. Modern tattoos trace their roots to Polynesia brought back by 18th century sailors. Tattooing has become increasingly popular in the latter part of the 20th century and early 21st century due to celebrities such as David Beckham and Janis Joplin.

Mum tattoos seem to feature hearts arrows and swirly writing (ok the image in the top right isn't a tattoo but I like it)

I did some sketchbook work using a drawing pen, dip pen and paintbrush to try and generate different ideas;

I would like to use more than just lettering but I think the design has to be simple and striking to work. If it was a real tattoo it could be on display for many years. I developed the hugging theme

I like the roughness of the image
above. For me tidying it up loses
something of the energy.
The letters work best coloured I think. Actual colour depends on
who it would be worn by.





However maybe a simpler design would be more effective. When I wrote Mum beneath the cats I did

and perhaps I like this one best of all!

A Menu Card

Started with some doodling in my  sketchbook

I experimented with combining 2 doodles

I also did a simple doodle on my phone which

I quite like. It has punch but it was just too quick and easy to do I felt that I would be cheating to use it so I went back to the computer and looked for some more ideas

The drawings were from images I found on google (ignore the cut out for the moment it comes later)
I liked the idea of creating a fishy scaly effect with potato or sponge printing. There are several pages of these which I won't bore you with. The top one was made with a carrot and a piece of spongy packing material cut to a basic fish shape, you can see the outline of the cutout in the bottom left corner.

The second one was a piece of sponge (both used gouache)
I then drew around my fish in pencil

I like it but it's not suitable for the brief

I drew a fish shape on the carrot print scales which I cut out and stuck in my sketchbook, you saw it earlier. Then I thought the carrot print looked more like a shoal of fish and drew into it

I like this best, maybe it needs rotating?

It works at 4cm x 4cm and could easily be enlarged. I would have preferred the colours to be a bit bolder but I don't easily work with bright colour (unless you count the phone image which could also work)