Dragon saga - October
My first ever big ol’ dragon tat.
Karen and I have been trading tattoos for waxes for a while now. (And yes I do indeed do trades for services). We’d done 3 other good sized tattoos and Karen was ready to ask for a dragon from me.
We chatted about placement and landed on lower leg. The goal was to wrap the dragon around her leg. My brain was buzzing. I had never done a full big dragon before and I had a helluva time trying to figure out the 2D drawing to the 3D leg. After relenting knowing I was going to have to freehand sharpie a a bit and getting a sketch ready we set out to do the linework.
We spent 1.5 Hours getting in this bad boi. The back had wings but was never photographed because after that timeframe they had a hard time sitting so I switched to a thinner liner to at least get the ‘blueprint’ of it in.
How was that such little time? Well, Karen and I addressed her medical needs. They have a diagnosis that make their body super painful some days and other days more tolerable. They push through their day effectively but it’s understandable that when electing to get stabbed it doesn’t have to be a forced multiple hourly grueling ordeal, it can be taken in sessions. Our goal was 2 hours, each time, but depending on her body and exactly what i needed to get done it could be less.
Because this was the first time I knew this could be more than my usual 2-3 sessioner I tried making a plan. First the darks, then the mediums, then the lights. Kinda like painting on canvas but reversed.
This second session was 2 hours. I used World Famous Dracula Red and was very happy with how it was looking. Only later did I realize I didn’t darken my back wings enough and it was going to bite me in the butt later.
Because of the limited time I didn’t get all the darks done. I realized I would also now need to account for sections as well. Some areas hurt worse than others and so it was just smart to shoot for front or back.
We repeated the process for sessions 3-6 I would figure out where I was working, whether it was dark medium or light, and bust it out. Each session was anywhere from 1-1.5 actual tattooing hours. Some days Karen sat like a champ, some days the pain was too much. I didn’t push for more to be done because I was happy with the sections and we did get done. Each time I would refine and retouch here or there, but focusing helped.
The biggest hurdle for me was the blacks. I have issues with contrast and really wanted the dragons face to pop but was nervous about putting so much black. I feel like I tortured Karen a little unnecessarily trying to get the black even.
Sadly I was bad about taking photos for a lot of the sessions. During the painting process we call it “the ugly phase” and I got in my head about whether it was going well or not. I regret saving those photos because you can see how my process was. I just was nervous about what other tattooers would think. Which is such a stupid hang up.
At the 7th session We tidied up a few areas, relined some of the back and added white highlights.
It was so satisfying to see this come together. I know Karen both loved and hated the process, but tells me how much it’s complimented.
In total we spent about 9 hours 45 minutes on this beautiful dragon. It was such a rollarcoaster and I learned a so much during this process.
I will say I love tattooing dragons and do want to do more. In an attempt to stylize dragon scales I fear I have likely broken a few dragon tattoo rules. I know that among other things tattooers will get me for. Overall Karen is happy, she often says I can translate whats in her head onto paper. However, practicing scales in general to understand them and THEN stylizing them would have been the better way. But sometimes you’ve only got a week to draw a dragon and 8 straight hours of sketching scales to make scales flow around the leg is all you get when you don’t do a traditional apprenticeship. Which is both liberating and hindering.
Thank you for reading the process on this. It was such a labor of love for my client to be happy with their body and art and bodyart.
