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Monday, April 6, 2009

Permanent Collection

Blink....pen and ink
tattoos


Serious artists have a portion of their resumes dedicated to permanent collections. It goes without saying that there is prestige associated with which institutions, businesses and individual collectors appear under this category. But what about tattoos? Pretty permanent. Pretty serious. I mentioned a while ago that I was doing line-work for a couple of tattoos....one for a friend Zach and one for my son Nate. Zach chose a meaningful quote for his. The calligraphy was rendered using a copperplate nib on fairly rough paper. The quote was then blown up in size in order to increase the imperfect and aged quality of the writing. That blow-up was then reduced in size as a template for the tattoo artist. Nate chose an owl named "Blink" that resides at Quail Hollow in Hartville, Ohio. I worked from a photograph and worked many editions in order to get the line-work just right....it was difficult as just a few changes seemed to alter the overall appearance in surprisingly striking ways. The owners of the tattoos seemed to be much more relaxed than me. At any rate....the art lives on.