Tattoo on paper

pluridimensional (60)in #art • 8 years ago (edited)

In this post, I want to present you with a tattoo that I made on paper.

The tattoo is a fascinating art. Personally, every time I see a tattoo I take the time to contemplate it and admire it. It's something I can not ignore.
The tattoo can be defined as the permanent modification of the color of the skin, making a drawing, an engraving, a text or a figure. The word "tattoo" has its origin in the Samoan word "Tatau", which means "mark something", and although I would never dare to make a permanent tattoo on skin, I love making designs of them. For that reason, I wanted to dare to make a complex tattoo on paper. Here I show you the result and a detailed step by step of the elaboration process

To make this drawing, I worked around 32 hours, due to the high level of detail of the tattoo. Next I will show you every step of the elaboration

Sketch

The sketch is made up of the back of a man, with his hands behind his head to show off the complete tattoo, which covers the back and shoulders. As you can see, the tattoo has dozens of details that would take a lot of work hours, but that would guarantee a good final result

Shading

I started by the left shoulder, shading part of the wings and skin. To perform this task, it is necessary to use little pressure when making the strokes. It is necessary to press harder on the edges to obtain a depth effect.

For the shading of the fingers and the neck, it was also necessary to use a light pressure of the graphite on the paper. I added a few strands of hair, and the respective shadow of the fingers to give more realism to the drawing.

For the rising sun that is located between the wings of the tattoo, I used the technique of pointillism. I drew some semicircles to guide me, I added the points, and little by little I degraded them.

Having the base of the semicircle, I could go scattering more and more separated points to obtain the gradient. This part of the drawing merited a lot of patience, since it had to be placed point by point until achieving the desired result.

In the previous image you can see the result that was achieved with the technique of pointillism. From this point, I could start working the wings.

The wings were the hardest part of drawing. I concentrated on the shadows and the central lines, using a game of dark tones and light tones. In this part I felt a bit of anxiety, because I had to try many times until it fit.

My favorite part was to shade the blades on the underside of the wings and the spine. To do this, I used dark strokes according to the position of the shadows to achieve a good effect of depth and light.

At this point I was already more than half the work and I was tired, but realizing how good I was staying, motivated me to continue working until dawn.

I did the shading on the right wing in the same way that I did with the left wing. It was a little easier for me because I had already practiced enough.

In this image you can see the level of detail that was used to shade each pen.

When I finally finished with the feathers, I just had to add the remaining shadows on the skin. I gave more force to the lines of the fingers and other shadows, until achieving the final result.