All of us at Chapel Tattoo were recently asked to paint a sheet of flash for a shop set, which I thought was an excellent idea. I’m really glad we were made to do it because I’ve always meant to try painting flash, but never did for some unknown reason. I’m not sure my style of painting is very suitable for it, and I definitely added some embellishments here and there that you wouldn’t bother trying to put in a tattoo, but I think the designs could easily be modified or adapted to be tattoo-able, which I guess is the idea anyway. Whether they end up being used or not, I had fun painting this sheet and might even try doing some more one day.
I’d been playing with some small sketches of magic and witchcraft inspired images for some time, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to flesh them out.
The full page: (click for bigger res images)
Mandragora, or mandrake. I am super fascinated by the folklore and mythology surrounding this plant, so will probably paint more of them in time.
The spider lady was an excuse to paint a lady face with some creepy extra eyes and legs; I like images of animals crossed with humans, or humans wearing animal pelts, because to me it suggests the transformation of a witch or shaman into their animal form.
Hissing kitty. Included because it’s a popular image for tattooing, and because cats are common familiar animals. And because, well, it’s a cat.
Ritual objects. Once again, skulls are such a timeless tattoo image that you can’t really go wrong with them; I included the other objects to resemble a ritual alter setting.
Hand of Glory. This is an intensely strange and grim piece of folklore that you can read about here.
Voodoo doll or poppet. This was inspired by a protective doll that a friend made for Shaun, and that has always fascinated me. I feel like the creation of dolls for magical purposes is a really powerful and intuitive way of working that I’d like to try some day.
This sheet was mostly painted with Indian and Sepia inks on Arches watercolour paper, with a few touches of white gouache which was originally there to cover some boo-boos, but that I included more of because I like the blue-ish colour it created. The background was painted with good old black coffee dregs from my stovetop coffee maker. I’m not sure what’s happening with the prints of this set, but when I do know I’ll be sure to post the details up. I saw all the finished sheets the other day and it’s really nice seeing all the contrasting styles and personalities in our shop reflected in the designs.
I’ve had the pleasure of tattooing some stellar individuals recently, and they’ve been getting some really fun designs to boot. For some reason I seem to be doing a lot of animal designs, many of them totem or special animals to the wearer, which always makes them more enjoyable for me. Yesterday I started this cute robin and olive branch on the very lovely Kat, who works across the river at Fox Body Art in Collingwood.
Got to test out my new camera on this one too, which takes way better photos than my phone does. Hand-me-down cameras are just one of the perks of having a photographer husband!
Another totem bird, from a few months back now…a little swallow for an awesome fellow named Drew, who I had great fun tattooing and talking shit to for a few hours.
A tiny lizard on Ainsley as part of her Celtic shamanism-inspired piece; this is just one of many animals I’m doing on her leg, including a stag, a fox, a hedgehog and an otter…but no decent photos of any of them yet.
Also fun recently was this zebra on beautiful Kate from Dukes, my beloved local coffee shop. Soon we’ll be adding poppies to this for some extra colour, and I shall get a less gross-looking photo as well.
More Louis Wain kitties on Sally…I’m gonna be so bummed when we fill this arm up, which will be happening rather soon. Hopefully she’ll let me start filling the other arm after that though.
Perhaps the most unusual request I had these past few weeks: a lynx and a pine martin running alongside eachother. There was an awesome story attached to this tattoo that I have sadly forgotten, along with the cool Polish name of the nice chap I did it on… but I know it was inspired by a sci-fi or fantasy novel.
And last but not least, a bordering-on-silly kitten playing with yarn tattoo for my darling sister Kate. The first of many cat tattoos I’ll be doing on her, I imagine.
Trying hard to get these cat paintings done, but Monty seems determined to get in the way.
So far I have outlined three of these and haven’t ruined any of them, which is a good start…although I did have a near miss last weekend when I stood up after painting for a while and discovered that the end of my plait had been resting in a pot of black ink. I’ll just add that to my long list of stuff not to do, along with keeping spray bottles of coffee lying around.
While I’m on the subject of painting though, I’m going to indulge in a post about materials that most of you will find boring. But it’s really cold and wet outside, and I have so much trouble finding the right stuff to paint with that I feel compelled to share it when I find something great; and I have actually found a few things lately that make my life as a painter a lot easier.
Firstly, any of you who work with paper will know that masking tape which claims to be ‘low tack’ is very rarely useful. Either it peels half your paper off with it after you’ve spent hours on a painting, or it’s so low-tack that paint seeps under areas that you were trying to mask. So I recently splurged on a roll of $20 masking tape, recommended to me by the nice lady at the art suppliers, and I am super glad that I did. The blue stuff you can see in the photo above is a brand called hyStik, and as you can see from their website, these guys are serious about masking tape. I bought the long-lasting one, which means I can stick my painting down with it and leave it there for 14 days before the tape starts getting harder to peel off. So far every time I’ve used it I’ve been able to get it off easily, with no paper tears or sticky residue, and all the edges I’ve masked with it have been perfectly clean. This in particular is of vital importance to me because of the paintings I do where certain parts of the image extend beyond the masked edge, like the wolfsbane piece I did recently:
Another thing I’m pleased with having found recently are brushes with ergonomic handles. One of the things I found incredibly frustrating over my one-month painting holiday was that after a certain period of painting or drawing, my hand was so sore, and particularly my thumb and middle finger where the brush/pencil rests, that I was constantly forced to stop and let it recover. Even layers of band-aids on both my fingers and the brushes are not enough to prevent this from happening, because I like doing work with loads of tiny details and have to use the smallest brushes, which also generally have the thinnest handles.
SO, I went hunting on the internet for brushes with fat handles, having seen some before in a similar post to this on the rather excellent Wandering Genie, and after hours of searching I found some. This picture is of larger brushes, but the handle on the 000 brush I bought is the same size.
Within Australia, these Roymac Purity bruishes are the only ones I can find (which is fine because Roymac make good brushes), but on Dick Blick in America I managed to find several brands that make a range of wide-handled brushes, mostly for detailing. I ordered a bunch of different ones that haven’t arrived yet, but they look excellent. The ones I’m most excited about are these:
The brand is Robert Simmons Expression Series, and these spotter brushes are smaller than any brushes I’ve found in Australia. They’re also a hell of a lot cheaper, like most things in the States, but the cost of having them shipped here cancels that out somewhat. So far the work I’ve done with the Roymacs has been far more comfortable so I’m looking forward to getting these.
Also making my life way easier these days is Saral Graphite Transfer Paper, which I only recently discovered:
Until now I have been using a glass-top table from Ikea with a desk-lamp underneath it to trace images onto my painting paper, and when I’m using toned paper or really thick card it doesn’t work well at all. For anyone who hasn’t used it, this stuff is re-usable and comes in a roll, so you can cut a piece that fits your paper and just trace right over the top of it. I’ve been using computer print-outs of the line drawing and tracing it though with a ball-point pen. The greatest benefit of doing things this way is that you’re not actually placing a pencil on the paper, and therefore avoiding the tiny grooves and scratches they cause on the surface, which annoyingly show up after putting colour down or rubbing something out.
I also just bought some stuff called Mask-It, similar to what Americans know as Friskit, which is a masking film for use with airbrushes and the like. Apparently it won’t damage paper and is useful for watercolour painting too. I haven’t tried it yet, but have some bits on these new cat paintings that I plan to mask out, so intend to try it in the next few weeks.
If this doesn’t work though, I learned a good way to apply large areas of masking fluid from my botanical drawing teacher, which is to apply it with one of those rubber-tipped paint shaper thingies you can buy:
Anyone who has ever accidentally dipped an expensive brush into masking fluid will understand why it’s important to use one made of rubber, not hair.
So now that’s all off my chest, I guess I’d better go do some painting. I have some technique/materials tips for graphite drawing that I might share down the track some times as well, if anyone finds this stuff useful. I’m always happy to share whatever knowledge I have with people who would like to know how I achieve certain effects in my work, and appreciate it when others do the same. The importance of good materials and knowledge of how to use them cannot be emphasized enough when it comes to painting and drawing, at least in my experience.
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