A friend of mine from high school, Rich, connected with me on Facebook. He remembered that I was always into art and wondered if I still did much art. I said yes and showed him my Facebook page, All Sorts of Art by Ali.
He liked my work and wanted to know if I could design a tattoo for his arm and shoulder. He wanted a drawing of the Tree of Life that showed the branches and the roots, with the trunk in the form of a woman and man embracing. I love to draw both trees and people, so that design sounded perfect for me.
I gave him a price for the comprehensive sketch, and that upon approval of the sketch, I would start the finished art, which would be half paid up front and half paid on completion. He went ahead and paid me for the sketch and also the first half of the finished art before I even started, which I thought was very nice because it showed his trust of me. I quickly produced a comp sketch, above, based on some reference pictures that he provided.
I submitted the comp sketch to Rich, and he made a request for me to make the entwined couple a little less prominent, so that appeared to be within the tree trunk instead of actually being the tree trunk. I achieved this by thickening the trunk around them and adding a woody bark texture to them so that they blended in more. In addition to making the trunk thicker, I added a little bit more to the tree branches to fill out that area, as well. Here is the pic, which received final approval. Next step, the finished art!
Now that Rich had approved the comp sketch and the deposit was already paid, it was time to start the finished art. I was going to produce this as black-and-white line art so that it would be easy for the tattooist to create a stencil. Rich had asked whether he should get color added to it, and I explained that it would be fairly easy for the tattoo artist to add color once the linework was done.
I transferred my pencil sketch to a piece of bristol board and inked the design. When I was almost finished, I sent him a picture and asked if he wanted any last-minute changes, but he said it looked perfect. That was nice to hear!
Here is the finished ink drawing.
Now that the line art was finished, I wanted to do a color version so that Rich could determine whether he wanted to get color on the tattoo.
To keep the original art clean and easy to reproduce as a stencil, I made a photocopy and added the color to that. I used colored pencil to color the leaves and the tree bark/roots, and then I added some blue around the top of the tree and some red around the roots. The blue gave a sense of sky, and we know that the ground isn't red, but I didn't want to make it brown like the tree, and I liked the way the red set off the other colors.
It was just a concept sketch, of course, to help him visualize a bit better. He was always free to get different colors. Once the art was delivered, it was up to the tattoo artist to add their own flourishes. If you will notice (you can click any picture to view it larger), I did sign my artwork, just above the lowest branch on the left side of the trunk. I pointed this out to Rich and said it was fine with me if he decided not to keep the signature.
He got it and sent me this picture showing it "live". As you can see from the below photo, it is covering his shoulder and upper arm, and it is quite large (he is facing toward the left side of the photo). He had given me the dimensions of 7 inches by 11 inches, and I did the artwork on a 9" x 12" bristol board so that it was full-sized.
The tattoo artist did a good job! There isn't any background color, as I'd provided in my sketch, but the green leaves and golden-brown color of the bark are very good matches to my suggested colors. This tattoo had so many tiny details, it must have taken a long time. I feel very honored that he was willing to spend the time, money, and, let's face it--physical pain--to get my design permanently added to his body!
All artwork is original and protected by copyright.
