After the parade, I went and got a tattoo. Well, the start of a tattoo. This is another big one like my Vader, so it’s going to take a few sessions. I had it all scheduled and everything — it’s not like I went out and got drunk after the St. Patty’s Day parade and decided I wanted a huge tattoo.. In fact, the place I’m going (evolvInk — really nice place, recommended) wasn’t taking walk-ins yesterday for that very reason.

This tattoo is really special to me, because it’s got a ton of very personal symbology. Although I’ve drawn several of my tattoos, this — like Vader before it — really needed a tattoo artist to make it what I wanted it to be. So I did a very rough layout of what I wanted and took it in to Johnny. Because we were downsizing quite a bit from my sketch I knew I’d lose some stuff, which was fine (in fact, some of the stuff I put in was add-ons to take up some of the white space, because my model was quite large).

We talked about what the most important parts were, and he did a TON of work revamping it to make it fit and also retain the important symbols. He did even more reworking yesterday when I came — he’s a true collaborator and just a joy to work with on this. He’s not afraid to express his opnion and share his knowledge about how things will work/not work in the medium, but he’s also super open to changing things up in order to make it fit my vision. I absolutely LOVE his reinterpretation of it and can’t wait to show you the finished piece.

For now, though, a little teaser…my original sketch: