One from today and an update

Hey everybody, hope everyone is doing well.
I did this in the new shop I am working out of.
They pretty much took me on as a 2ndary apprenticeship and let me do walk-ins.
This was one I got to do today and its one of the hardest things I've ever attempted.

KyleBl4ck said:

View attachment 27724
Hey everybody, hope everyone is doing well.
I did this in the new shop I am working out of.
They pretty much took me on as a 2ndary apprenticeship and let me do walk-ins.
This was one I got to do today and its one of the hardest things I've ever attempted.

Click to expand...

Why was it hard?

I’m curious too, as there are no straight lines, its pretty organic and the black section can be edged out if you need to tidy up outlines.

I think a rose is a great ‘first tattoo’ to do for the first two reasons above, and I’d put this design in the same camp.

Anyway, it looks pretty good so take the learning and apply it in your next piece, we’re all of us on a journey

MalligaMallan said:

Why was it hard?

Click to expand...

I'm re-learning properly and I'm having to change up a lot of things.
The hardest thing about it was trying to get the shading super light and using a 3rl for the fins.

I guess its hard to tell from the picture since it's so far away but the majority of the piece was done with a 3rl throughout the entire thing. I was trying to mimic someone elses style for practice.

whippet said:

straight lines

Click to expand...

Straight lines aren't always the hardest thing about a tattoo.
In fact straight lines are kind of easy....

The hard thing about this was using proper techniques instead of defaulting back to how my original mentor taught me.

I agree, I love straight lines BUT not so much when I first started. I still maintain that a curvy organic line, no actual right or wrong (within reason) is less challenging than a nautical star, Polynesian or geometric etc…but maybe thats just me, and I still see this design as a good starting point for a new tattooer (not suggesting that’s you).

Ahh…I see that it was more about you than the tattoo, makes more sense then. As I said, looks pretty good in any case.

whippet said:

nautical star, Polynesian or geometric

Click to expand...

See this makes sense as well lol.
Geometric and Polynesian are hard because they're long curved lines going parallel. That would drive me nuts if there was even a slight wobble xD

But yea, I'm mainly doing palm size tattoos and lettering because I learned a lot of things the wrong way and trying to correct them because I didn't like where I was as a tattooer.