Sleeve Step 1

Yesterday I moseyed over to Ink & Dagger and decided to go ahead and start my sleeve. I knew I wanted the Misty Benson print, so I pulled it up to show Kurt. He liked the idea and took me around 6pm. We got about 2ish hours fo work done on her and all the really sucky stuff like shading.

The pictures aren't great, but that's what happens when you take a picture of your own arm. Also, the autofocus on my camera goes off when you turn the flash off, so that's why the first one is blurry. It gives a pretty good idea of placement and how the arm is going to look. She's gonna be reds and blacks with purple highlights. The kitty is pretty much done, though I dunno if he's totally finished or not. We should finish her up in about 3 weeks. I'm sure I'll be healed before then, but I want to make sure everything I want done can be done.

Kurt had a similar idea to mine as to filler and tying the whole thing together to make it look like a sleeve. He suggested some kind of vine work or filigree and I wanted iron work inspired filigree with roses or rosebuds interspersed. I'm also toying with the idea of having something not so nice spelled out in there, but we'll see. It depends on how ballsy I'm feeling, but part of me thinks it would be hilarious to have "bite me" or "fuck off" worked in somewhere so that you have to look really close to see it, otherwise it just looks pretty. Another part of me thinks it might be pushing the envelope too much.

I'm also wearing one of the Man Day shirts, if you can tell. I didn't get one on Man Day probably because I was working (and loving it like the goof I am). It certainly makes me feel manly, like I needed any help!

More Ideas

So the idea that I had when my brain was scrambled still makes sense. It also makes sense to other people. I was thinking that the roses may have to be extended further down my arm to look right. Since the puppet (currently Em Jr as both of my inspiration pieces happened to be named Emily) is going to take up more space than I originally anticipated, I think it makes sense to extend the roses in both directions. I feel like it wouldn't look right if the roses only extended up my arm and left the bottom part blank. It's definitely something that needs to be discussed in our group pow wow, whenever that happens. Probably shortly before we get started on Em Jr.

My other idea was for a convention piece. As I've mentioned, I love the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. I though that maybe Russ (or someone else) could do that for me during the convention. I could also place it such that it leaves room to eventually add to it. Alice in Wonderland tattoos are fairly common, but I didn't really see many that focused on the Cheshire Cat. Most of them were larger scenes. Again, something to discuss with Russ (or someone). It'd be cool if Mark and Shane went but I don't think they're going to. I know Shane helped organize it a few years ago, so who knows? I'm just going to keep my eyes peeled.

And that's all for now as I'm falling asleep sitting up and it's back to the grindstone tomorrow. *sigh*