This exercise was really enjoyable! The task was to create a tattoo for a male friend around the theme of "Mother". The catch was it also needed to work well as a greeting card design so he can use it for Mother's Day!
I don't have any tattoos, and my knowledge of tattoo culture is very limited, but this made it really intriguing to me. So I tried to do a good amount of research. I managed to find a box set of a TV series called Tattoo Age which was really interesting, and talks a lot about the heritage and culture that is around tattoos in the USA. It was really enlightening, and I realised that there was so much breadth and depth to the topic.
I tried to do as much research as I could into the history of tattoos, starting with their ancient tribal connections, and then extending to more modern times. I was shocked to discover so many different sub-styles in the tattoo world. From Old School, New School to even watercolour and geometric designs. I tried to search for as many examples of these, and curated them in a Pinterest board:
After I had accumulated all of this reference it felt important for me to start narrrowing my focus, so I started with a mind map in my sketchbook. From there I picked our certain options and experimented with them, trying to emulate different styles that exist. My mum's heritage is Irish, and so I was drawn to the Celtic imagery and specifically certain knot symbols to represent the bond between mother and child. It felt that, in a way, I was creating this for me.
My biggest frustration was a lot of the motherhood Celtic emblems have been used in a very feminine way by women, but not really used by men a lot. I think that's because a lot of the time it's used by mothers, not often by children to represent their relationship. Whilst I was playing with one of the Celtic knot designs, I realised that it's outline reminded me of the nasal hole of a skull. Skulls are often used in Old School and Black & Grey styles, and this would also fit well with being neither feminine or masculine. However - would it make a good card design for mother's day? I wasn;t so sure.
So then it hit me that there are skulls that are not frightening, grotesque or macabre. The calavera designs used in Mexico, especially around the Day of The Dead, are used to celebrate life, family and ancestry. When death looks so beautiful, it's hard to fear it.
We have a porcelain calavera in our house as a memento of a family holiday to Mexico.
This was something I could work with. So I tried out some ideas in my skethbook, and then refined them with some colours to get a feel for what I wanted to do.
I went from rough to inking digitially, I made this choice because the symmetrical drawing feature of Procreate, which would allow me to create a clean and consistent design. You can see my process below, including the design choices I made along the way:
Refining the line art
The next step was to decide how I was going to progress my design. Would I use colour, or adopt a Black & Grey approach. The only way forward I could see was to experiment.
So I decided to print out the image onto paper, I printed four skulls onto one A4 sheet as a kind of contact page for me to see the different options together. It would also allow me to not worry about detailed shading and I could assess if the image worked once shrunken to greeting card size.
The other choice I made here was to abandon the digital aspect in favour of using paints. I did this to help the images feel like they are hand-made and authentic. I decided to use watercolours to give the blended ink look and feel and I had also bought some new modern neon watercolours which I thought might work well with the vibrant Mexican context of the skull.
This was a really helpful step for me, and I am very proud of myself for taking to the time to experiment this way and not rush to the final result. The bottom right doesn't actually look as good here as in real life - I realised afterwards that the scanner treated the neon yellow watercolour as almost like a highlighter, so doesn't scan it! I'll have to remember this in the future. I opted to pursue the Old School palette, as it's limited and forced me to make clear colour choices whilst giving the whole thing homogeneity.
I printed out the skull larger onto the thickest paper my printer would take, then proceeded to paint it, with my contact sheet as reference.
There were some areas where I made mistakes, and the paper suffered from the use of watercolour, so after I had finished and scanned in the original, I used Affinity Photo to tidy up the image and boost the saturation of the colours. I also added in a background to complete the illustration in its own context. As I used layers it would be easy to separate the background to use the skull by itself as a tattoo reference.
The last thing to do was to make sure the image worked as a greeting card, so I constructed a quick mock-up to check:
I am really pleased with the outcome and proud that I forced myself to extend my exploration. This was important given I had come to a concept early on in my sketching and it could have quickly ended up down a blind alley. I could probably have done more sketching to try the different styles out more, but I am not going to be too hard on myself here because I know how much time and effort I put into my research.
Updates & Re-work
As part of my preparation to have my work assessed for my degree, I looked back at the feedback my tutor had given me. For this exercise there were two points of feedback that I felt I would benefit from addressing:
"I wonder if you could work on the teeth area, as they seem rather scary at the moment."
and
"I think you just need to be careful that it is seen as a positive image rather than it being 'read' the wrong way by the mother"
The second quote was something that particularly resonated with me whilst I was doing the exercise, so it made me think if there was a way that I could learn and iterate from the feedback to make it more successful. The first thing I considered was the background colour. I don't like the cultural stereotype of pink for girls and blue for boys, but I did think the pink might be a bit softer. So I started by taking a pink from the skull, lightening it and using that for the background colour.
In my editing tool, I then added a layer to the scanned watercolour image, using black digital ink to soften the teeth and define more of the jaw line to give the skull a happier grin. I think the change makes the illustration much more successful in it's own right, as well being able to use it more successfully for its purpose on a greeting card.
With this in mind I wondered if there was a way to make the card less bland and more successful. Based on the second bit of feedback, I also wanted a mother to consider it to be a joyful, fun and colourful thing rather than any sinister undertone. I also didn't want to have to explain this with words.
So I thought about the amazing Mexican fiestas I experienced when visiting Mexico a few years ago. How they can make even run-down things and places come to life with colour. I thought this could be an interesting place to experiment with, so I started to play around with moving the skull's composition. I then thought about making the background a little more realistic, and of course I love a bit of texture now! I sourced two royalty-free texture photos of wooden panelling to see if they might work.
In placing them, it made the background too realistic and the skull also felt less prominent, the hierarchy was all out of whack. I had the idea of replicating the soft pink above, so colourised the vertical panels, and reduced the opacity to soften its contrast.
This worked really well but now the layout seemed too empty, even if I Was going to put in text. I created some Mexican-themed symbols and then positioned them around the card, altering the sizes and orientation. This took lots of experimentation and variation before I found the layout I liked.
I created some Mexican bunting, and then noticed that the skull didn't seem to gel well with the background. How could I make it look like it was part of the wall without fading away? I experimented with some layer effects until I found one I was happy with:
I opted for the third option: pin-light, which allowed the skull to stand out, but gave this really nice weathered and faded effect like it had been painted on the the wall and was becoming sun-bleached.
I continued to play and experiment with all of the items in my layout. This included experimenting with blend effects on the symbols to get the right blend of prominence whilst respecting the visual hierarchy.
I also changed the shape of the bunting, so that it reflected a more natural hanging shape.
After coming back to this after Section Five, I wanted to take what I had learned about hand-written type and apply it to this card. I used my sketchbook to play and experiment with different ideas.
I then hand-created a third word - Fiesta - with vector shaped, and added hand-shading to give it colour and texture. With all the elements in place I wasn't happy with the composition, so I tweaked the layout and orientation of the skull and some of the symbols.
I am really happy with the final result. I think it works so much better as a card, and I am pleased that I took the time to come back and revisit the work. I added in some typed text for the card inside that was in-keeping with the cover. I have ordered this card from Moonpig, to see what it looks like in the flesh. They didn't let me customise the inside as much as the cover, so I am interested to see what it will look like when it arrives.
References
[1] Alves, T. (2019). Is It Insensitive to Get a Māori Tattoo?. [online] Culture Trip. Available at: https://theculturetrip.com/pacific/new-zealand/articles/is-it-insensitive-to-get-a-maori-tattoo/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
[2] Amex Essentials. (2019). Getting Inked: Top 12 Cool Tattoo Styles. [online] Available at: https://www.amexessentials.com/tattoo-style-guide/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
Belden, E. (2019). Maori Tattoos: Stories on Skin - Tattoo.com. [online] Tattoo.com. Available at: https://www.tattoo.com/blog/maori-tattoos-stories-skin/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
[3] Esfandiari, S. (2019). Why Do Bedouin Women Have Facial Tattoos?. [online] Culture Trip. Available at: https://theculturetrip.com/middle-east/jordan/articles/why-do-bedouin-women-have-facial-tattoos/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
[4] Givens, R. (2019). A Beginner's Guide: Popular Tattoo Styles Briefly Explained. [online] Tattoodo. Available at: https://www.tattoodo.com/a/2016/02/a-beginner-s-guide-10-tattoo-styles-explained/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
[5] haidagwaiimuseum. (2019). Haida Tattooing. [online] Available at: https://haidagwaiimuseumcurator.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/haida-tattooing/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
[6] Kimberly, L. (2019). 125 Uplifting and Spiritual Haida Tattoos Ideas For Your Next Tattoo. [online] Inkme.tattoo. Available at: https://www.inkme.tattoo/haida-tattoos/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
[7] SIN ON SKIN Tattoo Studio. (2019). Describing different tattoo styles and techniques. [online] Available at: http://www.sinonskin.ca/tattoo-styles.html [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
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