Inspiration and Reference

Grindesign_tattoo (Rob Borbas)

Rob is an illustrator and tattoo artist who works in pen, and tattoos his designs on people. He also makes merchandise with his drawings on. He's established on Instagram, which seems very important for success as a tattoo artist, and which will become part of my FMP process. As I'm drawing my tattoo designs, I want to create reels for my Instagram profile related to tattoo design, so that hopefully I can draw in a wider audience and start to build a following and solid portfolio of work.

My Instagram Profile

This is how my Instagram profile is looking as of 31st January. I want to commit to posting at least once weekly throughout this semester (and beyond) to continue to grow my Instagram following.

Aleksdarkink (Aleksandra Voziakova)

I love these grotesque, sprawling, highly detailed ink drawings. These are quite big at around A2. These sorts of drawings would take too long to do for my book, but I can achieve this level of detail on a smaller scale, dedicating around 5 hours per week to each. If I can spend 5 hours on each tattoo design, and do this once a week, I can get atleast 15 drawings for my book. Each of these would translate to one page in the booklet.

helyartattoos (Gary Helyar)

Types of tattoo design

Tattoo artists tend to release 'flash', a sheet of available tattoo designs which are intended to be cheaper, 'ready-mades' which won't take as much time to tattoo and don't include design time in the cost.
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Logistics

Right now booklets from Mixam take around a week for delivery. I'll check nearer the time to make sure it isn't pushing too close to deadline, but I want to get my printing sent off two weeks before submission, by​ ​Friday 10th May.

Overall Theme

I want the book to feel cohesive even though not much design planning is going into it, so I'm setting some themes so the designs are interlinked. I also want to aim for similar styles, rather than change my drawing style every time. I'd like to go for a traditional, painterly or print sort of style, I want to incorporate texture rather than just solid lines. I want to experiment with ink and get some brush strokes and splatter textures in my drawings, but my drawings will be mostly with dip pen or fine liner.

Gustave Doré

John Tenniel

Debby Cotter Kaspari

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Initial Visuals

Theme - Dark Nature & Fantasy

​Traditional Drawings

Ink or pencil on paper

I'd like to work these up to have more to them than just be skulls, add florals etc.

Digital Drawings

Booklet Planning and Design

I want to split the book into two sections - traditional and digital tattoo designs. I want the tone to be similar throughout the book. I need to consider colour, as a little hint of colour could elevate this book. Right now with these thumbnails it looks like it's been printed in greyscale to save money.

​Finished Booklet

​Physical Booklets

Booklets I had printed to feature in my exhibition.

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Mock-ups
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