Reaper

I did this painting a while ago, I think it was late 2007, for an exhibition I held in early 2008. Basically I had been tattooing non-stop for 3 years since starting my apprenticeship and hadn't really had a break, and I was pretty much going insane. Aside from the fact that learning to tattoo is stressful, I was just drawing day in day out and spending the best part of my week in the shop, and I started to lose touch with every other aspect of my life. I hardly saw Shaun and when I did I was tired and miserable, and I rarely drew or made art for the fun of it, since I spent so much time drawing for clients.

As someone who's been making art since I was old enough to hold a pencil, it was somewhat depressing for me that art had been reduced to something I did for money; tattooing was exactly what I wanted to do, no question  there, but I still felt I needed to have a separate outlet for a more personal means of expression. So I decided to take a month off work and bust out a whole lot of paintings, and this was one of them (click to enlarge). I did 15 in total that month, although not all of them ended up in the exhibition.

As you can see from the progress pictures below, the scythe and hood were supposed to be smooth and shiny, not spattered with blood, and I spent hours painstakingly perfecting those blends...but then I came home from a Captain Cleanoff gig after having a few and ruined it by painting the background in without masking the foreground properly. The moral of the story; don't drink and paint, kids!

Despite this mistake, I'm pleased with how the painting turned out. The original is available to purchase and giclee prints can be made to order for $100. Email me here if interested.