Mind the Gap
No good excuse for the delay in postings so I won’t give you one.
Getting over the flu and still housebound, so as good a time as any to get caught up. I started on the Quantum Bunny painting. There are more photos of her but they appear to be “corrupted” so I will have to try and upload them again some other time. 
Started working on a little painting of a dream house on Christmas. I was working with an oil medium that I am not really familiar with and managed to almost completely wipe off the entire painting when I tried to go back into it. I haven’t touched it since. It’s sitting on my drafting table and I know exactly what I would like it to look like when I get finished. Hopefully soon. 
A friend contacted me and paid me one of the very best compliments a guy could ever say to me. He said “I miss your mind”. Nice and all warm and fuzzy that made me 🙂 In the course of the conversation he suggested a squirrel pegacorn – this happened as a result of that. I think a squirrel pegacorn should have more feathery type wings, so I am sure I will have another go at it soon. I do like the addition of the clydesdale fur on the feet and am sure I will be using that again other places. 
The painted, wiped away and repainted over too wet medium version of the cottage where I stopped. 
Got some healed photos of John’s right forearm when he came in to start on his left forearm. Right arm. 
Left Arm. Obviously this is early in the process and there will be more to come on this. I’ve heard rumours that there will be more elements as well, but at this point I don’t know what they will be. 
I asked Pam to tattoo my palm. When we tattoo each other there are usually gift exchanges instead of cash exchanges. I made this little snail painting for Pam. It was even almost dry by the time she tattooed me (one of the disadvantages of working in oil). 
Since this is an experiment of sorts (and we all know how much I dislike getting tattooed). We only did the edges of the design. There will be more shading and now that it has healed there are a few places that may need to be darkened. If you are interested in getting your very own job stopper tattoo and having your palm tattooed – I will tell you this was FAR easier to heal than I ever could have imagined. If I would have know how easy it was going to be to heal I would have asked her to go ahead and finish the design. Now I know. Still not much fun to get done, but easy to heal. 
I put this little Shirley tattoo here. I really liked Shirley. Apparently he feels otherwise these days and I didn’t ask why. I like remembering people in a positive light. (and Shirley if you ever make it back in, I won’t ask you what happened either.) Skulls are cool anytime, no matter why they are going on there. So now Shirley is gone and there is a skull there instead. His skin gets really red every time I tattoo him. Would like to see this when it is healed although I don’t know if he would let me shave his leg again to get a healed photo 🙂 
Figure drawing. Practice, practice, practice. Some days it’s good, some days it’s not, but it is always good for me. 
So Danny decided to show all the rest of us up and sat like it was no big deal to let me put this Batman and Joker tattoo on his chest. There are some more little details that I will want to put into it and up the contrast a little bit – but I now (once again) feel like a complete wuss in the whole getting tattooed department. Looks great and he has full bragging rights in the Greece shop (but isn’t doing any)(bragging that is). 
Jenn is planning on getting a whole sleeve of paisley eventually. We were able to sneak her in on a cancel spot to put this small one on her wrist. I actually think this is my first paisley tattoo. 
Frank was in and we grabbed some healed photos of his Pandora back piece tattoo. These are the ones that I took with my ipad. Stephen took some really nice ones with his fancy camera and I will be adding those to the White Tiger site once I get back around to wanting to deal with code. For the people who came for my talk at the Figure Guild last year, this was one that I had drawings of and had in progress with me that day. A few of you had asked to see it finished.
There is a second portion of this that is all black and grey and would go below her and tie in with the black and grey sugar skull on his rib cage – but we are holding off on that for a little bit. 
Where we are currently with Frank’s color arm. He gave me a lot of artistic freedom in this one and I am super happy with how it is coming out. 
Natasha. I love this lady. She is brilliant and super fun to hang out with. She had asked me a while back to make some passion flower tattoos for her based on some photos of them she had taken at her parents’ house. I really hadn’t put much thought into it until I started to make the stencils for the first two – but passion flowers are complicated! There really isn’t a good way to simplify or stylize them and have them still look like passion flowers. So these were done in two sessions (the first session was posted here a few posts back). Natasha was super patient through the process and I am sure that I will see her again and be able to get healed photos.
The birds are healed and are from a previous project.
I didn’t recognize Rachel at first when she came in to book the appointment to get her daughter’s portrait done as a sugar skull – but I can’t really be blamed for that since it’s been 15 or 20 years since I tattooed her last. It’s crazy to me how long I have been at this. The photo that she liked of her daughter was pretty fuzzy – so I did more of a drawing for the understudy than I normally would. 
Really happy with the results. Have a second session scheduled (as I always like to do with color portraits) in case there is any tweaking that needs to be done. Just to give you an idea – this is the ink that was left at the end of the day. It’s a lot of work to get something like this done. 
A thing that I am involved with told me that they needed a bio and a photo to go in the program (not being mysterious, there will be more info later). I dislike taking selfies, but no one was around to help. So here is me playing with some antlers that Stephen has and trying not to feel too ridiculous taking photos of myself. It occurred to me afterwards that I really need to get a pair of bunny ears and do this again with both on. When I posted them on facebook there were requests for the duck lips, but I’ve done that already (and didn’t have the duck lips with me when I was doing these). 
More figure drawing. 
Toby is feeling better. Not his abnormal self quite yet – but he is back to supervising and keeping an eye on me. 
What are you doing mom? (That’s Loki in the background… for the record, never ever ever name your pet after a Trickster God). 
Jesse asked me to make this Ziggy Stardust for her from a super graphic image (stark black and white with very little transitional tones). Tried to keep the stark feel of the reference photo while adding enough extra details back in that it makes it easier to see who he is. Jesse is another awesome human being that I am honored to be able to spend time with. She used to work the desk for us in Webster but is now working full time at Tru Yoga. She teaches several classes a week and is great at that as well. She is one of those people who puts her heart into anything she is doing and so she will always be successful. Love you Jesse and miss having you around the shop. 
She did a quick read for me. Lots of swords! 
and brought me a new little friend. He is so delicate I’m still trying to figure out where he should hang out that people can see him, but he won’t get damaged. 
Talk about troopers! This girl put us all to shame by getting this portrait of her dog (don’t be sad, the dog is still with us, this isn’t a memorial tattoo) done in one sit. There is nothing on my ribs yet, I’m way too much of a coward. 
Charles came and modeled for us in Figure Drawing. He is great to work with – super dynamic poses and holds them perfectly. 
Made this tattooed Marilyn Monroe tattoo for Isha and could NOT get a decent photo of it. It wraps, it’s red and it just wasn’t happening. I’m not blaming my poor photography skills for this one – It just couldn’t be done. Stephen had his fancy camera and there was too much glare to get anything workable. Hopefully you can see enough of the pieces in the photos here to get the idea. It really is way more impressive in person. Hopefully she will stop by sometime when it is healed and we can try again. this is an original by the way, she selected the photo of Marilyn that she wanted and let me design the tattoos. She did request the “Joe Heart” because she said Marilyn really did love Joe. I decided being a girlie girl, Marilyn’s tattoos would be feminine and floral. There is a rose on her neck that I don’t think you can see in any of the photos. 
Jeremy sent me healed photos of his Guardian Angel tattoo. As you can see this piece wraps his shoulder. The names are written in the family member’s hand writing (which he brought me samples of). The angel apparently looks a little bit like his sister which was totally unintentional since I made her up and have never met his sister. 
Secret. Okay, not so secret. I don’t like charcoal. I mean, I love the way it looks, I hate touching it. I don’t like getting it all over myself and I feel like I have so little control with it. Because of all of that and the fact that I constantly watch Steve Carpenter get amazing results with it – I continue to try and fight with it anyhow. Wanted to do a tonal layout for a client so he could see what I had in mind better than a normal line drawing. This isn’t finished and would have more detail to it if it was a tattoo. The window is done in pencil, which is great to work with, but lacks contrast.
More playing with charcoal (and sharpies and solvent). 
So once I got frustrated with charcoal, I decided to frustrate myself further by playing with caricatures. Never mind that I’ve never done them before. Why not.
There is this amazing artist that I follow on Instagram who asks people to post photos of themselves with the hashtag #sketchmyface and he does. You can find his work under @sketchmyface and @simple_simon So I helped myself to a couple of reference photos intended for him. This is @hannesto and I think it came out relatively well for a first attempt. 
The I grabbed one of @blur_os and defaulted to my more comfortable zone and this one is more realistic and less of a caricature. So this one is more inside my comfort zone, but less of what I was trying to do.
Practice. Practice. Keep learning and pushing and stepping outside my comfort zone. 
and then I figured out how to splatter solvent on the charcoal drawings and create more texture. There will be more experimenting to come (as always). Hope that you are having a good day.
Some days it is our duty to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
Just TeeJay's Blog 
Love your work, as always, but man I feel super old now!