Skin and Ink

It's funny how some things seem better in hindsight. Art is no exception. When I pulled my tattoo drawings out of my archives, I thought I'd have some great pieces to share, only to discover when it came time to scan them that there were two problems:

1) The art wasn't as great as I remember.
2) Most of it wasn't even my art. I must have been stuck for a dollar at the time, because a lot of the flash I did for this job was clearly hacked from other, better artists....guys likve Boris Vallejo, Patrick Woodroffe, Jim Fitzpatrick...and apparently anyone who's ever been published through Paper Tiger.

That being said, I did manage to cull a few pieces that I recall as being my own designs, and not of intolerably bad quality. These were all done as part of a single job for Studio III Tattoos in St. John's, Newfoundland. I think they're no longer in business, but proprieter Don Pynn was arguably one of the best and cleanest artists operating in the city at that time. He gave me quite a bit of wallspace for the drawings I did for him, and I have since seen some of the pieces in the popular tattoo magazines, so they can't have been TOO bad.
So, whatever I think of them now, I promised tattoos, and you've got tattoos....

1. Unicorns. Who doesn't love unicorns?



2. This has got to be the great trifecta of tattoo art, a skull, a rose and a serpent. If I'd put in a naked chick riding a bald eagle, this one could have had all the memes.



3. I've used this illustration in a number of places over the past two decades. I even still have the first pencil sketch in which it was rendered, way back in 1986. Since that time, it's been used in paintings, in colored pencil art, and to teach my kids about drawing form and shading. Pretty good legs for a single rose, huh?



4. This one started out as something I "tossed off" in Commercial Art class one day using technical pens. The original version has more texture. I find this cute, in a George Petty kind of way...



5. Don wanted me to design something that looked like the "Hot Stuff" devil, and this is what I came up with. For the life of me, I couldn't find any reference for the Hot Stuff character. Where was Google when I needed it?



6. Oh, there's the naked chick. Now I know I have a bald eagle around here somewhere....



7. Well, not a bald eagle, but what tattoo set would be complete without a dragon in there somewhere?



That's it for these. I'm not even going to bother scanning the rest, as they're either too awful or too obviously swiped. Next time...I dunno. I've been thinking of scanning some of my earlier comics stories to share, or some of my non-comics design work. Any suggestions? Comments are welcomed as always.