Fire first.
Joel’s dragon half sleeve, from a coffee and a chat to the final colour session.
Joel first saw my work at the Australian Tattoo Expo in December. He sent me an enquiry afterwards, and we caught up for a coffee at The Black Mark Tattoo in Northcote to talk through his ideas.
He’s a volunteer firefighter and wanted two half sleeves representing fire and water. I loved that idea from the get-go, and he was really open to letting me put my own spin on it.
We started with fire. A dragon, a completely blank arm and plenty of freedom with the drawing. Pretty awesome project to get stuck into!
There was already a tattoo on his other arm that we’d be working into the water sleeve, but I’ll save that story for another day.
From there, I got into the sketches and worked up the line drawing. You can see some of that early drawing process in the photos, before it all made its way onto Joel’s arm.
We did the half sleeve over three sessions. The first was all about getting the lines in and seeing the drawing take shape on his arm.
For the second session, we worked through the background, both on the outside of the arm and around the inside of his bicep. That’s a big change from looking at just the outlines, even with all the colour still to come.
Then, in the third session, we got the colour into the whole thing and brought it all together. Really, really happy with how this one turned out. It was such a fun idea to work with, right from that first chat over coffee.
Once the dragon was finished, we went straight into his other sleeve. That one’s finished now too: fish, waves and a bit of a revamp of his existing tattoo. I’ll share the water side here soon.
Thanks again, Joel, for being such a stand-up guy and trusting me with both of these. Loved working on them!
Nicklas
More of my neo-Japanese tattoos · Got an idea? Let’s have a chat