Masha du Toit

After a very long break I am back to blogging to celebrate the addition of a new tattoo:

I had a great time using the image bookmarking site visualize.us to gather inspiration. The bee-bomb creature is an existing tattoo. Here are the drafts working towards the final design.  The first attempt –

This is scaled down a lot – the design actually stretches the full length of my upper arm. Then a slightly more sedate version followed:

I liked the roots – ( I was to regret them later…)  then came this one:

Which is the design I took to Morag at Skinscape tattoos.  She was great – made me redraw the whole design and consider colour.  Below is close to the final design – I went on to draw over this by hand, inserting roots and other details.

Morage cut this into pieces and rearranged it so that it actually made sense on the curving surfaces of arm and shoulder.  I was very impressed  – she spent a lot of time with me,  and was happy to work freely when the design required it adding or changing details.

Then followed several hours of learning more about how the different parts of my upper arm respond to needling.  I dont recommend any designs that require lots of detail on the inner arm just above the elbow…

It came out perfectly – the colours are lovely, the black crisp.  But for the moment I am left with this: