Shouldercap tattoo in Samoan Maori patterns

Hi,

I have been quite busy the last few months with a lot of different projects, with little time to write posts on my blog.
But to show you some new projects I've been working on; here's a new tattoo for my shoulder galleries. It's a mixed design with Maori elements and Samoan pattern. The images below show the design process in different steps. First I make a basic outline for the shoulder as a template. Then I use my pencil to sketch some flowing koru shapes. Normally I do the whole piece with pencil first and start tracing it when I'm finished.
Today I was a bit impatient, and decided to trace parts of the tribal shapes. You see some Polynesian turtle patterns and Samoan spearheads and stylized fish.

Here you see half of the design traced with a black felt tip marker:

And a few pictures of the finished shoulder tattoo design

I also made a youtube movie of this Shoulder tattoo 156:

The tattoo is available for purchase on my website here.

Tomorrow I will be back with another design process!

Regards, Mark

from: Joey L. 

to: tiangotlost@gmail.com 

date: Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 3:22 PM 

subject: Lost in translation 

Can you please translate. 

Not another “gibberish tattoo”!

Obviously it’s supposed to be JOEY from the handy-dandy cheat sheet to the bogus gibberish font.

from: Alan Siegrist
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 11:52 PM
subject: Woman tree

Hi Tian, Hope you are still enjoying Austria.

Have you seen this tattoo?

The character is actually the Japanese katakana ホ (ho) not 木 (ki, tree). The mistaken use of ‘ho’ is quite unfortunate considering the woman as both subject and canvas. And yes, the hip-hop slang meaning of ‘ho’ (whore) is known in Japan and written with the same character.


http://www.ratemyink.com/?action=ssp&pid=103667