tattoo designs and drawings

[Barbara]

Well um...I'm borrowing a computer with a scanner right now, and I've been dying to get some of these online and show them to more people... you guys are the first to see these, outside of a few friends at home. The art & lit board is dead and so I didn't go ahead and post them there, but if the mods wanna move the thread then cool... anyway. Most of these are tattoo designs and I have loads more but all this stuff is typing-paper size or smaller, the larger stuff doesn't fit in the scanner window. I hope people like them. They were fun for me to draw!
:-o

Animals - always a strong seller in tattoo design. This is the phoenix I have tattooed on my back. Freehand w/sharpies

[Barbara]

Study of tiger stalking in water, black sharpie

[Barbara]

study of scorpion, sharpies... this was a real scorpion in a nature magazine I sketched, it was light brown in the photo and I changed the colors on it to make it more tattoo-ish

[Barbara]

Tiger face - scratch paper w/rainbow backing

This was my first ever scratch paper drawing

[Barbara]

dun-dun...dun-dun... shark! study from nature book w/black marker

[Barbara]

Black unicorns, I have a variation of this tattooed on my leg. Freehand w/black sharpie

[Barbara]

Study of zebra, black sharpie

[Barbara]

tribal butterfly, freehand w/sharpies

[Barbara]

Demon/bull head... freehand w/sharpies. One of those things I started out on and wasn't sure where I was going with it... I started with the large eyes and the shape just kind of evolved into a bull.

[Barbara]

Women - Another good seller in tattoo art, and one of my favorite/best subjects. For some reason drawing women has always came very easily to me, much easier than drawing men. This is a study of a girl in a tattoo magazine advertisement, in charcoal. She had piercings up both legs and that black ribbon laced through...ouch, but it was a nice visual effect.

[Barbara]

Freehand w/black sharpie, requested design by my friend Jennifer

[Barbara]

Nude girl w/veil - freehand w/rolling ball black ink pen. One of my early attempts at ink portraiting

[Barbara]

Girl with bloody sword, freehand w/black rolling ball ink pen. I like this one a lot, another early ink portrait...she looks like a comic book heroine sorta.

[blackeyedAngel]

part of me has always wanted a tattoo, but i wouldn't want to get one just for the sake of getting one...if i saw something that made me go "i want that on my body for the rest of my life!" i'd totally do it. i just don't have any ideas. i always thought a lotus flower would be pretty (and symbolic n stuff :oh: ) but i dunno. and where would i put a tattoo? i'm not that fond of any one particular area of my body that i'd want to show off or make special in some way! :oh:

p.s. you're very talented, barbara!!

[Barbara]

Kimono girl w/blue katana - freehand w/sharpies. This was a first attempt at a color ink portrait, wasn't brave enough to do skin tones yet.

[Barbara]

Freehand w/black crayon - drew this after the Star Wars movie opening, the weird costume is kinda inspired by the look of some of the female costumes in those movies.

[Barbara]

red fairy - freehand w/sharpies, this was a requested design from another female friend.

[Barbara]

Study of Marilyn Monroe from Playboy , sharpies. This was my first real ink color portrait, I was really happy with how it turned out, the light orange sharpie is the closest skin tone I could come up with, but it worked rather well.

[Barbara]

study of Tiffany Fallon from Playboy , sharpies... the playboy drawings have sort of become a series. This one I fucked up her back and can't fix it any further, but this was only my second effort at color portraits. This picture introduces the use of the handy silver sharpie, which is a very weird art tool.

[Drunkenmaster]

Barbara, you are amazing.

[Barbara]

2nd study of Marilyn from Playboy w/ added details... sharpies. CJ asked me to draw her as kind of a Magic: The Gathering - style warrior angel. I like her with the long red hair.

[Barbara]

3rd portrait of Marilyn from Playboy, sharpies again... I gave her longer hair and kind of made it redder. I've drawn Marilyn Monroe a bunch of times in different mediums and she's still one of my favorite subjects, and endlessly marketable besides.

[Barbara]

study of Bai Ling from Playboy ... I really like this picture but the markers made the paper crinkle a little. You can kind of see the lines... but this was a new challenge, she had really bronze skin so I had to come up with a new way to make skin tones with the sharpies. I like how it turned out a lot.

[Barbara]

Trippy stuff and misc.
These are just weird things I came up with or requested designs that don't really fit into any category. All are freehand w/ sharpies.

[Barbara]

requested design from a friend, he had a vague idea of what he wanted.

[Barbara]

Shroomtopia, haha, you can guess where the inspiration for this came from

[Barbara]

Another shroom drawing :smelly:

[Barbara]

Decorative crosses... this was sort of a requested design from a girl who wanted a celtic-style or other colorful cross, I drew these three for her.

[Barbara]

Large Celtic cross, another requested design.

Okay that's the last one ;) I didn't realize I had so many copied until I started posting them...but anyway, hope you enjoy them, if you wanna ask me about a drawing or tattoo design feel free to PM me, and danno & Drunkenmaster I will have yours ready soon :)

[blackeyedAngel]

i'm impressed, lady!

[Drunkenmaster]

Originally posted by Barbara
Drunkenmaster I will have yours ready soon :) I can't wait. They look fantastic.

[Hi There, Am Pam]

Wow Barbara, I'm very impressed! I liked the first one, and the shroom ones the best, but you probably could have guessed that. Very impressive!

[Jackal]

WoW! They are beautiful!

So are you a tattoo artist? Do you sell these to the shops?

[Divine]

Originally posted by Barbara
Women - Another good seller in tattoo art, and one of my favorite/best subjects. For some reason drawing women has always came very easily to me, much easier than drawing men. This is a study of a girl in a tattoo magazine advertisement, in charcoal. She had piercings up both legs and that black ribbon laced through...ouch, but it was a nice visual effect.

Barb, you're really talented. I love all of them. Ironically, FYI the type of piercing(s) that is called a "corset" for obvious reasons. ;) Check your PM, you! :O

toodles

[Barbara]

Originally posted by Jackal
WoW! They are beautiful!

So are you a tattoo artist? Do you sell these to the shops?

Well, I'm learning...I've been drawing a long time and have been into drawing tattoo designs for a few years...but I'm just recently learning to actually tattoo. I don't have my own equipment yet, I have a good friend who did my bird tattoo that's teaching me on his equipment, but before I can really go anywhere with it I'm going to have to get my own gun and inks and supplies. I've tried selling some of this stuff to shops before, mostly they want large pages of small flash drawings though rather than full-page single color pictures (most of these except the smaller black-and-white animal pictures are full page (8 in X 11 in) pictures. I had to size them all down quite a bit to post them here so they wouldn't be over the byte limit. I think I would do better to learn tattooing on my own and eventually have my own shop or work within someone else's, rather than sell these as flash art... a lot of places that buy flash, once they buy it, the art becomes their property and you don't have any rights to it anymore.

p.s. thanks everyone for the compliments and being nice :)

[Jackal]

Although you're are a stranger, for some reason I'm very happy for you. I guess because you have talent and are using it, instead of doing it just for fun and wasting away at some awful job.

There's a couple of Tattoo reality shows on: Miami Ink and Inked that you might enjoy.

[Herr Lipp]

Wow Barbara they are better than I thought they would be (I mean that in a nice way! I already thought they would be good but some of them are excellent).

You have a good style of conveying psychadelia. Such a good style, I may have to ponce (steal) one of your shrooms pics.

I like what you said about women tattoos. My Uncle used to be a miner in Scotland. Back then it was all teh rage to have tattoos, and he literally has his whole arms covered. He has an absolutely strikingly gorgeous womans face on his right under-forearm. It's just the face that molds into other tattoos, but it's brilliant. I think the woman ones could be profitable, if you decide to start selling them

I also think the colourful Tiger tattoo is great :yes:

Negatives (you need constructive criticism everybody does!) : perhaps not all would crossover perfectly? Im not 100% with tattooing process, but Im sure shading would be pretty difficult, if not painful?

[Barbara]

Originally posted by Jackal
Although you're are a stranger, for some reason I'm very happy for you. I guess because you have talent and are using it, instead of doing it just for fun and wasting away at some awful job.

There's a couple of Tattoo reality shows on: Miami Ink and Inked that you might enjoy.

aww thanks! Well, I have always enjoyed drawing but I'm also wasting away at a job ;) I don't really make money off any of my drawings. Right now I work in the office of a company that helps disabled people find housing and jobs and people to help take care of them, I'm in the tax/worker's comp department. So it's pretty boring, more boring than having a tattoo studio would be I'm sure :) I have tried to sell some of my oil and acrilyc paintings before but Kansas isn't a big area for fine art. I've sold a few charcoal portraits to people before, mostly people wanting me to draw their kids and stuff. A lot of things I've just given away as gifts to friends and family. If I ever do get well-known or famous or whatever (might never happen, if it does I might have to be dead first D: ) but then there would be a lot of people out there with original artwork by me and I can only hope it would be worth something someday! But tattooing seems like a neat career, definitely in-demand, and if I can learn to use the tattoo needle as effectively as a sharpie, I'll be awesome at it. (it is very good for me to practice with sharpies and ink pens... because the same idea applies with a tattoo gun, once the line is there, you can't erase it). Especially if I can learn to do portraits with the tattoo gun... even among professionals, a good portrait tattoo artist is somewhat hard to find.

I read tattoo magazines sometimes and get ideas from them, I don't have cable TV though so I haven't seen those shows :(

[Barbara]

Originally posted by Walter Sopchak

You have a good style of conveying psychadelia. Such a good style, I may have to ponce (steal) one of your shrooms pics.

Negatives (you need constructive criticism everybody does!) : perhaps not all would crossover perfectly? Im not 100% with tattooing process, but Im sure shading would be pretty difficult, if not painful?

Hi Fraser! Thanks very much, I appreciate the compliments :) ... I wouldn't mind at all if you got one of my shroom designs, I have a lot of drawings I did for tattoos as requests from friends, they have all said they love them and want to get them done, but so far I'm the only one that has an actual tattoo of something I drew ;) ..hopefully some of them really will get one of my drawings tatted, but it would be really cool to know someone as far away as England has something of mine!

On shading, with tattooing almost anything is possible now... there are some artists who do just gorgeous work, very realistic... shading is a more difficult thing to learn, you use different needle sizes generally to get the right size of lines. But actually as far as pain, the thick, black lines and thick colors are more painful than shading or smaller lines...because the needle size is a little larger and goes a little deeper into the skin to get the darkness. Shading basically is the same as drawing thick lines with the needle, except the needle size is smaller and you use a lighter touch...so shading actually doesn't penetrate as deeply. The tattoo gun is sort of like a pen or pencil in some ways, you can set the needle to only go to a certain depth (this is to prevent it from going too deep, which will cause bleeding and scarring), and to get thicker lines you just press a little harder, for thinner shading lines you use a really light pressure.

[Herr Lipp]

Cool, thanks Barbara. It's really very complex. Watch this space I might get drunk and have a fucking shroom tatto what the hell. I think I'd prefer a ganja leaf, though, if you fancy lending your talented hands to pen and pencil once more??

Have you or anyone youve known ever got a "bad" tattoo as in one that looks nothing like what you asked for. that would suck major testes.

[Divine]

:O crap tattoo's are a no-no. you better know who's doing your work.

btw, there's nothing wrong with sucking of the testes. i'm sure you like it when you're lady friend does it. (or whoever does it..haha)

[Barbara]

Originally posted by Walter Sopchak


Have you or anyone youve known ever got a "bad" tattoo as in one that looks nothing like what you asked for. that would suck major testes.

Yes, actually my very first tattoo was a small butterfly that I drew on my upper back. The phoenix tattoo my friend Mike did was a cover-up, the upper portion of the tattoo (where the wings cross over) is now covering the old tattoo. He did a fantastic job on it, if you didn't already know there was another tattoo there, you'd never be able to tell. The problem with the first one was that it was a lot more colorful in my drawing...but the artist made it almost entirely black, and the colored parts he had changed the colors so that it wasn't at all what I wanted! The bad thing was that this was on a spot on my back where I couldn't see what the artist was doing at all until the tattoo was done, so when it was finished I couldn't really do anything to ask him to change it or fix it. But Mike is amazing, he's not even licensed and he impressed me more with his non-professional, living room work than any studio I've ever been to (my other two tattoos were also done in a studio). He made sure that he knew exactly how I wanted this, that the placement was correct on my back, checked with me to make sure that all the colors he was using were right...even getting some of them out and putting them on thick paper to show basically what the color would look like on skin. He did it for much cheaper than any price I could have got from anyone for one that size and with that much color and detail... he said that he didn't mind giving me a low price because the finished work would look awesome in his portfolio :D

I also had a good friend that had a similar experience with her first tattoo, she picked out a picture of a frog in the shop, but also got this on her shoulderblade where she couldn't see what the artist was doing...he added a bunch of stuff into the picture that she didn't ask for, she still hates that tattoo. A problem with a lot of studios is that the artists are so used to clients that don't really care/know what they want, just pick something that looks cool out that they've probably tattooed a million times before..so they either get bored and take "artistic liberties", or worse, they would RATHER do boring flash designs that are easy and anyone who asks for custom work is going to get a huge price tag, and an artist who will just slop his way through the work to get it done quickly and get paid. It helps to really check around shops, look at portfolios, watch the artist at work on someone else...most places of reputation won't mind this at all. The best bet is to find someone who really seems to have talent and enjoys artwork, and will make sure the client knows what they want and doesn't just start needling away on you without asking you anything about your design/colors first.

[Static Split Screen]

Very nice Barbara!

I've never drawn a naked woman except when I was nine and I tried to draw the picture in the Titanic movie in class when I was bored and the teacher said it was inappropriate :(

[Lalique]

so do you want to be a tattoo artist then?

i once considered doing that but i realized that i would be so nervous about getting it right that everytime i would puke over the person first or accidently gouge their eye out with the needle. also i couldn't stand working with all those posers.
my friend got a couple of tattoos that i drew for him though... i hated it but at least he's pleased with them i supppose.

[Herr Lipp]

Originally posted by danno
btw, there's nothing wrong with sucking of the testes. i'm sure you like it when you're lady friend does it. (or whoever does it..haha)

I've never had my danglers licked or sucked :( haven't gone out with anyone dirty enough....and I'm not one to ask for such filthy things! Im a picture of refinement, let me tell you :)

[Depechekin]

fucking awesome, Barbara!

I'm sooo sorry for the delay, I am horrible about checking my PM's but yeah that is some wonderful shit you've got there!

I always thought a really cool/stupid idea for a tattoo was to get a tattoo of yourself getting a tattoo of yourself getting a tattoo.

I'm weird :D

[Barbara]

Awww thanks John! (Louisiana John, hehe) I saw the craziest tattoo in a magazine the other day, a full piece that covered this guy's entire back... the tat was of a crowded theater, with a giant movie screen, and everyone in the theater and the young woman on the screen were both looking out at you as you looked at the tattoo, all of them either looked like they were screaming or horrified...like these little tattoo characters were just enjoying their movie until you came along and peered in on them ;) it was fucking awesome, I wonder if the idea came from a painting, the artist wasn't credited in the mag.

[Divine]

Originally posted by Walter Sopchak
I've never had my danglers licked or sucked :( haven't gone out with anyone dirty enough....and I'm not one to ask for such filthy things! Im a picture of refinement, let me tell you :)

you're missing out. a good teabagging is a good thing. you'll never forget it.

[motorcyclemptiness]

I like the unicorns the best. I'd get those!