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Now that I am selling my designs on my Yahoo!Store at: http://www.luckyfishart.com I have written this page with some of my top secret time tested sure fire tricks of the trade, and encourage people who are taking my designs to a local tattoo artist to print it out and give them a copy. Couldn't hurt, might help! It is to be hoped that the tattoo artist you have chosen to patronize is a competent professional, whose portfolio you have examined. But it is possible they may have had little experience in Celtic tattooing. This page is written to give some practical pointers in the application of Celtic designs, and it may facilitate your installation to give a copy to the artist. Years of specialization have taught me a few tricks, and I am happy to pass them along to help you achieve the best possible result with my tattoo design. The single most important consideration for the best result in a Celtic tattoo is the scale in which the design is reproduced. Making a design too small will frustrate the artist, and sooner rather than later it is likely to begin to blur together, disappointing the client. My personal bias is to do all lines with a tight 7round, so if I cannot draw the design with a thin Sharpie pen I am worried about the detail being too intricate. If the client insists on a tiny design, I insist they pick a less intricate pattern. Personally I think that the control I can achieve with a single or triple needle line always shows the breathing and tremor movements of the skin, and I like the look the Japanese achieve with bold lines of varying thicknesses. After I get the whole design laid in I do the wicker shading, whipshading out from every point where the lines pass under another. I do this with a quick application of pure black. I know many people use a watered gray, but I like the painterly effect that the pure black gives the finished piece, a good contrast to the precision of the lines. Then, when I see how much darkness I have created within the pattern with shading, I go back through and selectively thicken lines for emphasis. I usually double-thickness the outside edge, and if there is an animal or other central element I may go around it also to make it stand out better. These non-representational designs are strange enough, it helps to define the points of most interest to lead the eye. The parallel lines of knotwork are the biggest challenge, and here again the scale is crucial. I like them to be at least 1/4 inch apart, if I am to do any "wickering" shading to make the piece look dimensional. If they are 1/16th of an inch apart I will do them, but without shading, and often run a bead line of white ink between the lines to serve as insurance against them bleeding and blurring together after time. This is also a frequent repair method I do on pieces that were done by others, that are brought to me after the inevitable has happened. It is amazing how white ink can open up a design. Color can be very beautiful in knotworks, but dark colors will defeat the purpose of taking a lot of care with the braid lines. I use a bright light color in the knots, or none, and save the dark colors for the negative spaces in the backgrounds. That serves to bring the design forward in space, and since many of the smaller negative bits would close up to black anyway a dark color fills them nicely. It is often most effective to scribe a new border line just outside the edge of the design, following the external edge, as a way of strengthening the silhouette. If there is a background negative space color it can fill a border area and tie the whole piece together. Placement on the body is crucial. I am one whose old-school ethics demand that animals always face forward on the body, and I often place a stencil several times to make sure that it looks symmetrical and balanced. Check for distortion with body movement, and watch out when traveling across a muscle mass that it does not dip and distort a line. Placing Celtic armbands is very tricky. I make a stencil much longer than I will need and start by placing it against the body at the level desired. Then I have the client slowly lower their arm onto it. If you place the inside while the arm is lifted you will have a hellish time getting it to be horizontal to the ground. This way the inside is level, and you proceed to bring the pattern around from the front. The joining up place should be at the back of the arm, where it is not visible to the client or casual observers. Make the joining happen just under the arm at the back. I personally feel that there is no magic to a band with a gap in the middle, and the greatest challenge for the artist is that last inch, making it look perfect. The skin stretches and contracts, and paper squishes a bit, and with practice you can figure out how to link up the repeats to give the best result. I start by making the braid the width the client prefers and holding it up to the arm. If it is within an inch of a link, I can manage to make it work. If the repeat is off by more than an inch, use a xerox to make a different sized stencil. Otherwise you will have to make up the link with a partial of the pattern, and that is something to be avoided wherever possible. If there is a big difference in the circumference of the arm between the top margin and bottom margin of the braid it is very helpful to cut into the braid, just a bit, between each set of the repetitions of the pattern. That way if it needs to contract you are not wrinkling the stencil, they are overlapping. I am very superstitious about beginning the tattoo before I am certain all the elements look perfect on the skin. Disaster lurks in thinking you can freehand the braid! I always have the person stand at a distance to check for areas where the line may dip down or waver due to muscle mass beneath. Then I lay in a correction margin line with a light colored feltpen and proceed to redraw the knotwork to adapt, using a ball point. Sometimes this takes a long time but the result is worth it. Hopefully these notes will be useful, because a well done Celtic tattoo is a thing of beauty that enhances the wearer for the rest of their life. From the beginning of my tattoo career they have been the designs that challenged and pleased me the most to apply, and I wish my peers good luck as they work with my LuckyFishArt.com designs. | |||
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