Tattoo apprenticeship

I've been more than late for new posts but I've been busy for over 3 weeks now working at Dead Tree Tattoo and piercing as a tattoo apprentice under Matty Ford the owner. Here are some of my first pices I was working on since coming here.

worked background..

Taking any object you would like to draw and using it to make a textured and worked background which is just as interesting as a finished drawing.. just select a small section of your object in mind, for this i used some type of mammalian jaw bone. so take colour and detail and spread it interestingly.. allow yourself to be lose and then do a simple contour drawing on top of the object you used to create a very interesting series of drawings.. i used some charcoal and powdered conte with some water to create light washes and added some light details with some burnt sienna conte pencils..

Perspectives frown within the skull

For a perspective project using variation of texture, line, style and color I have chosen a human skull as my object. Here is one of the drawings.. Using sienna pencil and some pen I came up with this.. The second photo has been digitally altered to allow for a higher degree of contrast between the shades and colors.

Ice mummy

A few days ago I finished an image of a 2500 year old mummified woman.. Time preserverd her in her last moments.. Her physical remains surpassed her ancestors and our own. Time and the cold elements of this world naturally protected her from the normal oxidization of living tissue.. Hardened and hidden away for 2500 hundred years, now here she rests.

Celestial promises

I did a small mock up for this a while back, Creating a flow of movement and playing with the directional values of the image. You feel floaty on the washed out waves but as your eyes hit the closest figure you are drawn forward figure to figure, until the surf pulls at your vision again making another trip from corner to corner. I used washes of black and blue India ink on this, and some watered down acrylic for the hair, the size is 18"x24"

Some pages from my sketch book.. And the forgiving morning

There is no better feeling on a rainy day, some hot coffee and the tactile tension in the space between the paper and pencil. It happens before you know it.. The act of the hand presuming the push of lead against a pure white surface.. Something known and untold.. It leaves a ripple in the normally steadfast current of the day. An entire catalogue of introductions ands instructions of how your day will go about . I don't know where it ends but I know that this is the correct place to begin.

The faces in our minds

The brain tries to recognize things and place them as if you have been there before.. The human consciousness is more than what we generally make it out to be. It sees humanity in the shadows making you double guess what you are experiencing in the darkness. It deciphers  through our vision.. It listens and mimes.. It rules and stays hidden always lying in ambush for the next shadow just out our periphial vision.. I'll leave you with some faces in the shadows around me.