squid vs whale, collaboration

spent the night at work doing a collaborative piece with splat, hanging out with jason, our new artist, and making erok cry. A good time was had by all.

I have been doing collaborative work for a while now. As long as both artists are really communicative about the plans for the piece, things work out really well. You can use all your own strengths and ride on theirs, to compensate for your weaknesses.

For this tattoo, we each drew a side and then tattooed there mostly. But I’m sure once we get into the color we’ll start jumping back and forth.

He sat for two hours. Not a bad sitting for having two mean artists drill on you at once. Of course, this happens to one of my coworkers, too, so he knew what he was in for.

The hardest thing in a collaborative tattoo is getting a decent grip, enough to hold em still when your collaborator moves, stretches, lets go. That can be a pain in the ass. Sometimes you can have  just one person do the outline on their own then both jump in for color, but with this tattoo we both worked the whole time.

More pictures after the jump.

here, splat is doing some fill color. I’m dipping for ink, and kimmy, our counter girl, jumped ini to snap a photo.

You can see the part of the squid where I was doing some cross-hatching stuff, line work as shading.

And outlining little circular tentacles.

also, splat was blinking. he normally works with his eyes open.

I plan to do some light browns and red over those wee repeating lines.

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Oh yeah, and I got a t-shirt from adamsky today, and it made me stupid with delight.

the belly is fake but the DUR is all natural.

this picture is awful. but I like it