Pattern, take 2

Our next lesson on Sktchy was also about pattern, but this was pattern on skin—the model had tattoos. She was also posed at an awkward angle and was sticking her tongue out, and I found her rather unappealing as a subject.

I decided, instead, to reach out to my friend Susan, who is a professional photographer and also has tattoos, friends with tattoos, and fellow photographers who shoot pictures of people with tattoos, and ask for some subject matter. Her friend Travis Haight overwhelmed me with options (thanks, Travis!), and after a couple of false starts on one woman whose facial angle I couldn't capture no matter how hard I tried, I switched subjects again to the beautiful Marion.

I have to say that painting tattoos is a lot harder than was doing the pattern on Fasyali's shirt yesterday! They are unique rather than repetitive, and it is also hard to decide how to convey them, since they are drawn onto a malleable surface (skin) instead of onto paper. I ended up drawing the model in pen but rendering her tattoos in pencil and paint only, to give them a slightly softer look. I didn't do them justice, but captured at least a faint likeness.

It's also easier, I have discovered, to paint ordinary-looking people than it is the extremely glamorous. This woman doesn't have a noticeable pore on her porcelain skin, no wrinkles, and only a few faint shadows, and it made it harder to capture her personality than when I can go all out on the shading and modeling of less perfect features. I ended up concentrating mostly on her beautiful eyes, and on her blonde Lana Turner hair with pink highlights.

This was a fun, if challenging, exercise. Not sure I'd want to capture tattoos again, except with photography. The thing is, it's an art form in and of itself; so being an artist who copies art means you don't ever quite live up to the original.

#30Faces30Days #29—Marion
Uniball pen, pencil, watercolor, Bee sketchbook