So, about 5 years ago I did a painting on a skateboard deck with a illuminated bust of a human head. The brain was represented as if glowing to show the inner workings of the head attached to a glowing cluster of veins rising up through the neck. Coming from the brain was a speech balloonesque silhouette continuing to another idea.
A few months ago, while visiting me at the shop, a friend (Nathan) expressed interest in starting a 3/4 sleeve based off the human element of the painting. Color me happy. Color me interested. Color me brinstorming!
Yesterday we began work on the job. Nathan has a few existing tattoos on the arm, so we first needed to understand how to cover or work with them. The tattoo at the top forward center of his shoulder is a cross made from spike nails with symbolic blood and tear drips. We decided to incorporate this as the thought idea of the illuminated human form. To continue this idea on to the rest of the arm I first needed to sketch the bust. I started with the head.
From here i needed the beginning of the shoulders, chest, and arms. Not as much sketching involved as the search for reference. Exhausting my page flipping efforts I simply had Katie, our shop assistant at Kustom Thrills, pose for a rudimentary photo. This worked greatly to clear my minds eye of anatomy wool! Collar bones vs. shoulders and all that shit become a headache real fuckin' fast. I continued from this sketch to a marker drawing of the basic body elements.
From here I could easily add in the brain, skull, and illuminated vein details. Drawing finished, we were on to the stenciling process...
After stencilin' on the bust, I drew in the bottom of the idea sillouette, and the beginings of some Durer style light rays. Now were ready to begin.
and here is how that went....
We finished all the preliminary black and grey and wrapped it up to let it heal leaving the final black details and ALLL THE GLORIOUS COLOR for another session.
SO FUCKING STOKED. We'll get back on it next week with more ideas and elements comeing together if its healed. fingers crossed. More to come!
-jonny